Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields.
She was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Her achievements include the development of the theory of “radioactivity” (a term she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world’s first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.
Some of the best quotes from Marie Curie are listed below.
- “A great discovery does not issue from a scientists brain ready-made, like Minerva springing fully armed from Jupiter’s head; it is the fruit of an accumulation of preliminary work.” – Marie Curie
- “A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.” – Marie Curie
- “After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.” – Marie Curie
- “All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.” – Marie Curie
- “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” – Marie Curie
- “Certain bodies become luminous when heated. Their luminosity disappears after some time, but the capacity of becoming luminous afresh through heat is restored to them by the action of a spark, and also by the action of radium.” – Marie Curie
- “Each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.” – Marie Curie
- “First principle: never to let one’s self be beaten down by persons or events.” – Marie Curie
- “Have no fear of perfection; you’ll never reach it.” – Marie Curie
- “Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.” – Marie Curie
- “I am among those who think that science has great beauty.” – Marie Curie
- “I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.” – Marie Curie
- “I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support.” – Marie Curie
- “I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.” – Marie Curie
- “I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.” – Marie Curie
- “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” – Marie Curie
- “In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.” – Marie Curie
- “It can be easily understood that there was no place in our life for worldly relations.” – Marie Curie
- “It is important to make a dream of life and of a dream reality.” – Marie Curie
- “It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science.” – Marie Curie
- “It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.” – Marie Curie
- “Knowledge leaves no regrets. Except for radiation. I wish I’d never messed with that.” – Marie Curie
- “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” – Marie Curie
- “Men of moral and intellectual distinction could scarcely agree to teach in schools where an alien attitude was forced upon them.” – Marie Curie
- “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” – Marie Curie
- “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” – Marie Curie
- “One of our pleasures was to enter our workshop at night; then, all around us we would see the luminous silhouettes of the beakers and capsules that contained our products.” – Marie Curie
- “Radium is not to enrich any one. It is an element; it is for all people.” – Marie Curie
- “Scientist believe in things, not in person.” – Marie Curie
- “So perished the hope founded on the wonderful being who thus ceased to be. In the study room to which he was never to return, the water buttercups he had brought from the country were still fresh.” – Marie Curie
- “Sometimes my courage fails me and I think I ought to stop working, live in the country and devote myself to gardening. But I am held by a thousand bonds, and I don’t know when I shall be able to arrange things otherwise. Nor do I know whether, even by writing scientific books, I could live without the laboratory.” – Marie Curie
- “The various reasons which we have enumerated lead us to believe that the new radio-active substance contains a new element which we propose to give the name of radium.” – Marie Curie
- “There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.” – Marie Curie
- “There is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.” – Marie Curie
- “There is nothing more wonderful than being a scientist, nowhere I would rather be than in my lab, staining up my clothes and getting paid to play.” – Marie Curie
- “We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. Toward this end, each of us must work for his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity – our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.” – Marie Curie
- “We have no money, no laboratory and no help in the conduct of this important and difficult task. It was like creating something out of nothing.” – Marie Curie
- “We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” – Marie Curie
- “We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something.” – Marie Curie
- “We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for mankind.” – Marie Curie
- “When one studies strongly radioactive substances special precautions must be taken. Dust, the air of the room, and one’s clothes, all become radioactive.” – Marie Curie
- “Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrate.” – Marie Curie
- “You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.” – Marie Curie
- “You must never be fearful of what you are doing when it is right.” – Marie Curie
- “You’ll never make me believe women were made to walk on stilts.” – Marie Curie
