BRAVE HEARTS- Marie Curie

 Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw in 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław SkłodowskiHer father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue. Her mother, Bronisława, operated a prestigious Warsaw girls' boarding school; she suffered from tuberculosis and died when Maria was twelve. Maria's father was an atheist, and her mother a devout Catholic. Two years earlier, Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus. The deaths of her mother and sister, caused Maria to give up Catholicism and become agnostic. On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings. This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria and her elder sisters and brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.She studied at the clandestine Floating University, and beginning her practical scientific training in a laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture run by her cousinJozeph Boguski  who had been assistant in St. Petersburg to the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev.Skłodowska studied during the day, and she tutored evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893 she obtained a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory at Lippman's. Meanwhile she continued studying at the Sorbonne and in 1894 earned a degree in mathematics.

In the same year Pierre Curie entered her life.She was still laboring under the illusion that she would be able to return to Poland and work in her chosen field of study. When, however, she was denied a place at Kraków University merely because she was a woman, she returned to Paris. Almost a year later, in July 1895, she and Pierre Curie married, and thereafter the two physicists hardly ever left their laboratory. Marie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. She used a clever technique to investigate samplesUsing the Curie electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity.Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioacvtivity  (a term coined by her, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasmsf("cancers"), using radioactive isotopes.On receiving the Nobel Prize, Marie and Pierre Curie suddenly became very famous.In 1897 and 1904, respectively, Marie gave birth to their daughters,  Irene and Eve Curie.Skłodowska–Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, she would receive the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment. On 19 April 1906, Pierre was killed in a street accident.Her death on 4 July 1934, at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly contracted from exposure to radiation.