Marie Curie Timeline

Curie chose the investigation of uranium rays, recently discovered by Henri Becquerel, as her doctoral thesis. She demonstrated that this radiation was an atomic property rather than a chemical reaction, pioneering the concept of radioactivity—a term she coined.

Image source: Radioactive decay

While analyzing pitchblende ore with Pierre, Marie Curie identified a new radioactive element, which they named polonium after her native Poland. The discovery was announced by the French Academy of Sciences on July 18, 1898.

Image source: Polonium

The Curies announced the discovery of radium, an intensely radioactive element far more powerful than uranium or polonium. To prove its existence conclusively, Marie undertook years of painstaking work processing tons of pitchblende residue.

Image source: Radium

Marie Curie succeeded in isolating a decigram of nearly pure radium chloride and determining radium's atomic weight, providing irrefutable evidence for its existence. By 1910 she isolated pure metallic radium with André Debierne.

Curie published her comprehensive two-volume treatise 'Traité de Radioactivité,' summarizing a decade of research and establishing the theoretical foundations of the new science of radioactivity.

Curie attended the first Solvay Conference on physics in Brussels alongside Einstein, Planck, and other leading physicists, discussing quantum theory. She was the only woman among the participants.

Image source: Solvay Conference

The Radium Institute (now Institut Curie) opened in Paris with four laboratories dedicated to physics, chemistry, and medicine, with Curie as its director. It became a world center for radioactivity research and cancer treatment.

Image source: Curie Institute (Paris)

Marie Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for research on radiation phenomena. She became the first woman ever awarded a Nobel Prize, though initially the committee intended to exclude her until Pierre insisted her contributions be recognized.

Image source: Nobel Prize in Physics

Marie Curie assumed Pierre's chair at the Sorbonne, delivering her first lecture on November 5, 1906, to a packed amphitheater. Her appointment broke a major gender barrier in French academia.

Marie Curie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of polonium and radium and the isolation of radium. She became the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences—a distinction she still uniquely holds among multiple disciplines.

At President Warren G. Harding's invitation, Curie toured the United States, where American women had raised funds to purchase a gram of radium for her research. She received the radium from President Harding at the White House and visited numerous cities.

Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering artificial radioactivity, extending her parents' legacy into a new generation of nuclear science.

Pierre Curie was struck and killed by a horse-drawn wagon on rue Dauphine in Paris during rainy weather. Devastated, Marie took over his professorship at the Sorbonne, becoming the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Curie narrowly lost her bid to become the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences, losing to Édouard Branly amid xenophobic and misogynistic press attacks fueled partly by her relationship with physicist Paul Langevin.

Image source: French Academy of Sciences

During World War I, Curie developed mobile radiography units—nicknamed 'petites Curies'—to bring X-ray imaging to field hospitals near the front lines. She personally drove vehicles and trained some 150 women as radiological assistants, helping treat over a million wounded soldiers.

Image source: Marie Curie

Recognizing the shortage of qualified medical personnel, Curie established training programs teaching women anatomy, radiography techniques, and car maintenance, creating a corps of skilled X-ray operators for military hospitals.

Curie helped establish the Radium Institute in Warsaw, fulfilling a dream of giving her homeland a major research center. Her sister Bronisława served as its director, and the institute became a leading Polish oncology facility.

Image source: Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology

Suffering from aplastic anemia attributed to prolonged exposure to radiation, Curie made her last visit to her laboratories in Sceaux in June 1934 before traveling to a sanatorium in Passy, France.

Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, France, at age 66. Her death resulted from cumulative radiation exposure, and even her notebooks remain radioactive and are stored in lead-lined boxes.