Marie Sklodowska Curie :: biographies bio

Marie Sklodowska CuriePhysicist1867-1934You spatenot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals.To that end, each of us must cause for our own improvement and, at the sametime, share a world-wide responsibility for all humanity, our bug outicular duty beingto aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. Marie CurieMaria Sklodowska was born November 7, 1867, as the fifth and youngest child of Bronsilawa Boguska, a pianist, singer, and teacher, and Wladyslaw Sklodowski, a professor of mathematics and physics. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. From childhood she was remarkable for her prodigious memory, and at the get on with of 16 she won a florid medal on completion of her secondary education at the Russian lyce. Since her father, a teacher of mathematics and physics, lost his savings through bad investment, she had to do work as a teacher and, at the same time, took part clandestinely in the nationalist free university, reading in Polish to women workers. At the age of 18 she took a post as governess, where she suffered an unhappy love affair. From her earnings she was able to finance her sister Bronias medical studies in Paris, on the understanding that Bronia would in turn later help her to get an education. She became involved in a students revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences.