Interesting Facts about Marie Curie

Marie Curie was a chemist and physicist famous for becoming the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. She was brought up in Poland before eventually moving to France and obtaining French citizenship.

After French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel first discovered a strange source of energy coming from uranium (radioactivity), Marie Curie decided that this would make a good field for research.
 
With the help of her husband Pierre and his electrometer, she made numerous scientific discoveries and showed that radiation came from the atom rather than from an interaction between molecules. Marie, Pierre and Antoine were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

In 1911, Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her discovery of radium and polonium and subsequent research.

In 1932, Marie Curie founded the Radium Institute in Warsaw, Poland. The name was changed to Maria Sklodowska Curie Institute of Oncology after World War II. The institute carries out specialised cancer research and treatment.
 
Famous Marie Curie quotes

"We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like radium, a benefit for humanity."

"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."
 
Source: Sciencekids