Marie Curie, scientist: “Nothing in life is to be feared, only understood”

Marie Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, lived there until the deaths of her mother and sister from tuberculosis and typhoid fever. After those tragedies, she left for Paris, where she studied mathematics and physics at the University of the Sorbonne. She became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

In Paris she met her husband, Pierre Curie, with whom she shared her first Nobel Prize – the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. Her career did not stop there. In 1911 she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry and on her own.

Curie is widely regarded as one of the most influential women in science, thanks to her groundbreaking research into radioactivity and its application in cancer treatment.

She also left behind several memorable quotations, the most emblematic being: “Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.” She is also credited with saying: “I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.”

Curiosities about Marie Curie

She often repeated that nothing in life should be feared, only understood. Curiously, this phrase was never directly spoken by her, but was attributed to her husband in 1923 when he was speaking about her.

Among other little-known facts, in order to pay for her studies, Curie gave private lessons at night for very little money and often went hungry. To finish her studies in Paris, she survived on a diet consisting solely of tea, bread, and butter.

Her importance grew even further during World War I, when she realized doctors needed a way to locate bullets and fractures in wounded soldiers. She designed vehicles equipped with X-ray machines and drove them herself to the front lines.

In 1914 she was appointed director of the Radium Institute in Paris, where the Curie Institute was founded. In 1934, she died from aplastic anemia, believed to have been caused by her prolonged exposure to radiation.

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