The first Nobel Prize was awarded to Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie on 10 December 1903. She received it together with her husband Peter Curie and Henri Becquerel. The Academy awarded scientists in physics for their work on radioactive elements. It was the first time in history that this prestigious award was given to a woman.<\/p>\n
A second Nobel Prize was awarded to Marie on 7 November 1911 in chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium – the new radioactive elements. She and Pierre did it in 1898. Unfortunately, her husband died in 1906 under the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage.<\/p>\n
How did the Polish woman get to France?<\/p>\n
Maria Sk\u0142odowska was born in 1867 in Warsaw. Today’s Polish capital was then under Russian occupation – at the end of the 18th century when Prussia, Russia and Austria violently partitioned Poland.<\/p>\n
Maria made an agreement with her older sister, Bronis\u0142awa, to go to France to study. The younger sister worked in her homeland, supporting the older sister, who was studying in France. Then, after the older sister finished her studies, the roles were reversed. The agreement worked out and the future Nobel laureate began her studies at the Sorbonne in 1891.<\/p>\n
While at university, Marie met her future husband Peter and pursued an academic career with him. The couple immersed in the study of radioactive elements, devoting all their time to the subject.\u00a0 They even conducted experiments on themselves. For example, Peter exposed his hand to radium for several hours and then described how the wound behaved.<\/p>\n
What did polonium and radium bring?<\/p>\n
Without the elements discovered by the couple, it would be difficult to imagine the modern fight against cancer. This is because polonium destroys cancer cells. It is also used in chemistry. Furthermore, it is applied to ionise air and remove electrostatic charges in photography and printing. Polonium is also used in satellites, where it is a source of heat and electrostatics.<\/p>\n
Radium was also used to treat cancer, particularly for acute cases, but its use in therapies was abandoned due to its high radioactivity. Today it is used to produce glow-in-the-dark paints and in biological experiments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maria Curie-Sk\u0142odowska was the only woman in the world to receive two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Why was the discovery she had made with her husband so important…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":32987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n