FINAL ASSIGNMENT BY GUIDE
BIOGRAPHY OF MARIE CURIE
AURA SOFÍA PEDRAZA OVALLE
PRESENTED AS A REQUISITE OF
NATURAL SCIENCE AREA
GUIDE # 1
PRESENTED TO TEACHER
CLAUDIA INÉS DURÁN SILVA
COLEGIO LA QUINTA DEL PUENTE
NATURAL SCIENCE AREA
FLORIDABLANCA - SANTANDER
September 21st, 2021
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INTRODUCTION
Marie Salomea Sklodowska Curie was a polish-french physicist and chemist.
The Curie family has received six Nobel prizes in total in different disciplines.
Marie and her husband Pierre (1903), Marie (1911), her daughter Irène Joliot-
Curie with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1935) and her other son in law
Henry Labouisse (1965).
The history of Marie Curie is not only that of a great woman scientist, but that
of one of the greatest scientists in the history of mankind.
QUESTIONS
Observe the following video and answer the questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aowghaUvP6Q
1. Who was Marie Curie?
Marie Curie (1867-1934) was a physicist and a chemist, best known for her
studies of radiation.
She was born in Warsaw, Poland, as Maria Sklodowska on November 7 th,
1867. After winning two different Nobel Prizes, making many scientific
breakthroughs in her lifetime, and helping in World War I for the treatment of
wounded soldiers she became very sick for her prolongated exposure to
radiation and died on July 4th, 1934.
2. Describe Marie
Curie’s childhood and
her family
Her parents were both
well educated, her father
taught physics and
mathematics, and her
mother ran a girl´s school.
She was the last one in a
family of five siblings (4 girls and 1 boy).
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Her mother and one of her sisters died when Marie was 10 years old. Marie
had a sharp and curious mind and did well in her studies. She graduated with
a gold medal from school at age 15.
3. Why did she was not able to get in the University? Where did she
study?
In Warsaw the university didn´t accept women. Marie and her sister
Bronislawa studied in secret at something called Flying university, an
unofficial night school that would allow women to join. As this was not enough
Marie and her sister Bronislawa made a plan to travel to France to finish their
studies, first Bronislawa while Marie worked in Warsaw to support her studies,
and later Marie.
4. Describe the struggles Marie Curie had during her life in France as a
student.
When Bronislawa became a doctor in France, Marie had the opportunity to
travel to study at age of 24. When she arrived, she noticed than her years in
Warsaw studying on her own represented an initial disadvantage in university
together with her imperfect french.
She decided to not live with her sister and rented and attic closer to the
university and had big economic difficulties, that made her go hungry and
cold. Only her determination and desire to learn kept her going.
5. Who was Pierre Curie?
Pierre Curie (1859-1906) was Marie´s husband and also a scientist. She met
him looking for laboratory space to work in. They began to work together and
then they fall in love. They were married in 1895 and they had two daughters
Irène and Eve.
6. How did she discover radioactive materials?
Marie decided to study a PhD, no matter in that time no woman was never be
graduated from a doctorate in science, and she began to study uranium for
her topic of research. Discoveries of that time have showed that X rays can
travel through muscle and skin, on the other hand uranium can produce rays
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that can travel through metal. Marie called materials that produce these rays
as radioactive.
She tested every other material she knows to see if anything else produced
these kinds of rays (as uranium), and that’s how she discovered polonium
and radium even more radioactive than uranium.
7. Describe the discoveries Marie Curie made and the prices she won.
Marie earned a master’s degree in physics by 1893, finishing as the top
student in the course. She won a second degree in chemistry in 1894. In
1903 Marie earned her doctorate in physics, becoming the first woman in
Europe to do so.
In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded by the Nobel Prize in physics
for the advances their study of radiation made to understanding the structure
of atoms. In 1911 Marie received her second Nobel Prize, this time in
chemistry, for her discoveries of radium and polonium.
She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only
woman to win two Nobel Prizes and the only person in history to earn them in
two different sciences.
8. How did she contribute during World War I?
She created mobile x-ray trucks to help battlefield surgeons treat wounded
soldiers. Over a million soldiers are estimated to be treated with her x-ray
mobile units.
CONCLUSION
The story of Marie Curie is that of a great scientist, who for the time in which
she lived, had to fight against the prevailing sexism and despite being
discriminated against, she obtained notable achievements in the field of her
knowledge. The imprint of his work is indelible and his contribution to the
history of mankind is hardly comparable.
Her life is inspiring, since despite the circumstances to the contrary, he never
allowed himself to be defeated and she always fought for what she wanted.
