radium.
Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1867. She worked hard because she was determined to go to college.
By 1891, she had enough money saved, and in 1894 she graduated from Paris University of Sorbonne. She graduated
at the top of her class in the science field. She married physicist Pierre Curie, and they worked with Henri Becquerel.
Becquerel discovered radium gave off radiation that could be seen and produced on photographic plates. Marie
calculated the radiation leaving the pitchblende (an ore that has uranium) and found that there was significantly
more radioactivity in the ore than in the uranium itself. Marie hypothesized that other elements had ores that
were radioactive too. Marie and Pierre separated the ores and found two very radioactive elements. Marie named
them polonium and radium.
Marie, Pierre and Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Marie became the first woman ever to receive this award. She also received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1911. No other person has received two Nobel awards in science. She died in 1934 because of overexposure to radioactivity. She was researching the isolation of a new element.
