With two Nobel Prizes, various awards and as a member of several scientific academies, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, better known as Marie Curie, is one of the most important women in science. The physicist became famous for discovering the elements polonium and radium and also coined the word ‘radioactive’. She is the only woman to have ever won two Nobel Prizes and, along with Linus Pauling, is the only scientist to have received two Nobel Prizes in two different fields.
To honour the work of this extraordinary physicist, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum was opened in Warsaw in 1967 in the house where Marie Curie was born in 1867. A trip there is particularly worthwhile for fans of physics and chemistry who want to delve into the life of the Polish-born scientist. But not only that, because the biography of the Polish-born scientist is also fascinating: in addition to her scientific achievements, difficult chapters also shaped her life, such as strokes of fate like the death of her husband Pierre Curie, the difficulty of obtaining an academic education as a woman or the tabloid press’s treatment of her relationship with Paul Langevin.
Museum website: https://www.mmsc.waw.pl/en/
Photo: Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize portrait in 1911. Credits: Public domain/Generalstabs Litografiska Anstalt Stockholm.
