How old is Marie Curie?

Marie Curie, known internationally as Madame Curie, remains one of the most influential scientists in history and a pioneering figure in chemistry and physics. She was born in 1864 in Warsaw as Maria Salomea Skłodowska into a family of educators, with her father working as a school principal. Exceptionally talented in the sciences, she moved to Paris in the late 1880s to pursue higher education and enrolled at the University of Paris, where she also tutored and began her early research.

Curie discovered two new chemical elements, radium and polonium, naming the latter after her homeland. In 1895, she married her colleague Pierre Curie, whose work also focused on radioactivity and magnetism. In 1903, Marie, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking studies on radioactivity. In 1911, she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, becoming the only person ever honored in two different scientific fields.

Throughout her career, Curie continued to study radiation, contributed to the development of radiological treatments, and helped implement X-ray services in European hospitals. She later founded the Curie Institutions, which remain leading medical research centers. Marie Curie died at 66 in France from complications caused by long-term radiation exposure.