Marie  Curie popularly known as Madame Curie was the great scientist who had made one of the world’s most important discoveries. Ironically she is the only Nobel Laureate to have won the prize twice. In reality, she was not just a scientist but the greatest scientist the world has ever produced. Marie Curie along with her husband Pierre Curie, another great scientist  discovered Radium, a rare metal which is used in treating certain diseases, specially Cancer.

Marie was born in Warsaw in Poland in Eastern Europe in 1867. She wanted to go for higher studies but her parents were unable to do so because of poverty. Again at that time women were not getting admission in the university of Warsaw. However, due to insistence of friends and relatives, Marie went to France for higher studies at the age of 23. In Paris she  completed M.A. It was there that she met French Scientist Pierre Curie who had studied effect of heat on magnetic substances. She married Pierre. Both husband and wife were interested in research in physics and chemistry. They started working on the mystery of radio activity.

A French scientist, Becquerel had discovered that the metal Uranium was radio active. Uranium comes from an ore named pitchblende found in pitch-like masses. But both Marie and Pierre noticed  that the ore pitch blende itself was even more radioactive than the Uranium. So they took a lump of pitchblende and began to break it down into all its different parts. They did these experiments in an old wooden hut as there was not enough space for the big lump of pitchblende in their very small laboratory.

For four years both Curies continued the job of breaking down the big mass of pitchblende and dissolving in acids. They sincerely and patiently tested each little bit of it. One day in 1898 they found a tiny part weighing one-tenth of a gram which was more radioactive than all other parts. Finally Radium, the very unusual metal sending out powerful radioactive rays was discovered. Again, they discovered polonium. So, their perseverance paid and they discovered Radium and its activity. Both Marie and Pierre were awarded Nobel Prize for physics in 1903. Pierre Curie became a professor at the University of Paris. But he died in a road accident in 1906. Marie took over his job and became the first woman professor of Paris University. In 1911, Marie Curie was again awarded Nobel Prize for research in chemistry. The French Government set up a centre for research named the Curie Institute of Radium, with Marie as the Head. She pioneered Medicinal use of radioactivity, isolated metallic radium. At last in 1934, Marie Curie, the inventer of Radium which is used in the prevention and cure of Cancer, died in Cancer. The dangerous rays of Radium killed her.

So Marie Curie was not just a scientist but one of the world’s greatest. She said ‘Radium is an instrument of mercy and it  belongs to the world’. The radio active rays of radium can destroy dangerous growths in the human body such as cancer. Today one gram of radium costs about $ 25,000.