Marie Curie was born Manya Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. Her mother was the director of a boarding school for girls. Her father was a professor of physics and math at a high school in Warsaw. Manya was the youngest of her brother and three sisters. Her brother's name was Joseph and her sisters' names were Zosia, Hela, and Bronya. In 1871, when Manya was at the age of four, her mother died of tuberculosis. This left her father and four siblings alone.
Marie's father later lost his teaching position and had to take in borders at their home. In spite of having to work hard at home preparing meals, Marie was able to win a medal for excellence at the local high school, where the examinations were held in Russian. After completing her high school education in 1883 at the age of sixteen, Marie began earning her living as a tutor and governess for a family in Poland. This was a time when Russia dominated Poland and girls could not attend universities in Poland. Marie's older sister, Bronya, had already left Poland to study medicine at a university in Paris. Marie sent a portion of her earnings as tutor and governess to Paris to help pay for her older sister's medical studies. In 1891, when Marie was twenty- four years old, she was invited to live with Bronya upon her completion of medical school. This enabled Marie to enroll at the University of Paris and begin her own dream of becoming a university student. Marie studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry. It was upon enrollment in college when she changed her first name from Manya to Marie. After three years of her education at college, she graduated top of her class and earned her degrees in physics and mathematics. The year that Marie graduated with honors from the University of Paris, she met Pierre Curie, who also studied and later taught at the School of Physics and Chemistry of the University in Paris. The following year, in 1895, Marie and Pierre were married. For a wedding present he got her a bicycle. Cycling turned out to be something that they both loved to do. Not long after they married, Marie became pregnant and had a baby girl that they named Irene. A few years later she was to become pregnant again with another baby girl that she would name Eve. In 1896, Marie heard that Antoine Henri Becquerel, also a French scientist, found that rays coming from a uranium ore affected a photographic plate in the same manner as X-rays. These rays did not seem to be related to any external source of energy, such as the sun, and were more powerful than the radiation from pure uranium. "Becquerel's discovery fascinated the Curies. They asked themselves whence came the energy ~ tiny, to be sure ~ which uranium compounds constantly disengaged in the form of radiation," (Eve Curie p.153). Hearing this great news, Marie was determined to find out what caused this great discovery. This is when she decided to study the mysterious mineral called uranium. Like all scientists must do, she began her research by finding all the resources that she could on the substance.
Shortly after she began studying uranium, Pierre decided to join his wife in her search for the radioactive element. All of their work took place in an old storage shed not far from the university under very primitive conditions. Pierre supplied all of the materials that were needed for her experiments, including his own invention, an electrometer (an instrument which measures the differences ...