Marie Curie, born Marya Skłodowski in 1867, was one of the most famous Polish scientists of the last 200 years. Born in Warsaw, she ended up doing graduate study in Paris, where she met her French husband, Pierre. They worked together in research in a joint laboratory. This was a fast-moving time in physics and chemistry. Wilhelm Röntgen had won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 to recognize his 1895 discovery of X-rays, generated electrically. In 1896, Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered the same kind of rays came from uranium salts, thus discovering radioactivity, a term coined by Marie Curie. This set off a wave of research among scientists to find out more about this newly-recognized phenomenon. One can reasonably say that the whole wave of modern quantum physics that began in the 20th century was started by these discoveries.
Pierre and Marie Curie worked with uranium ores and identified a new element, polonium, and theorized that another element, radium, existed that was very radioactive. They and Becquerel shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries in radioactivity. In 1906, Pierre died in a carriage traffic accident in Paris. In 1911, Marie won the Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for her work in finally isolating radium as a pure element and examining its properties. She is one of two people who have ever won two Nobel Prizes in two different fields.
The Curies and Radium by Elizabeth Rubin is one of the books in the Immortals of Science series. This series was originally published by Franklin Watts in the early 1960s and is now being reprinted by Purple House Press (see the Diane Pendergraft review of the entire series, Sept. 11, 2025 in Plumfield Moms book reviews). This book about the Curies focuses mostly on Marie Curie, since it is reasonably clear that although husband and wife worked together, the driver of ideas was Marie. The book is well-written at the middle school to early high school reading level. Finally, it is interesting to note that Pierre and Marie’s oldest daughter, Irene, and her husband won the Nobel prize in Chemistry together in 1935 for another aspect of radioactivity. I guess genes matter - and good work - along with family influence!