COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Today’s (November 7, 2011) Doodle on Google‘s homepage pays tribute to Marie Curie, the famous Polish-French physicist and chemist born Nov. 7, 1867.

Marie Curie was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw. She studied at the Sorbonne Institute in Paris, earning a degree in mathematics in 1894. There, she also met her future husband, scientist Pierre Curie, whom she married a year later in July 1895.

Among her many contributions to science, Curie coined the term “radioactivity,” discovered two elements — polonium and radium — and founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.

She was also the first woman to receive a Nobel prize and the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes, for physics and chemistry.

Curie spent the majority of her lifetime working with radioactive substances, unaware of their harmful effects on human health. She died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia, a condition that was a result of her long-term exposure to radiation.