Marie Curie

**Marie Sklodowska Curie**is one of the recurring characters of Quantonium.

## History

Magus's True Name is Marie Sklodowska Curie. She discovered radioactivity, and, together with her husband Pierre, the radioactive elements polonium and radium, while working with the mineral pitchblende. She became the first woman to obtain the Nobel Prize and also the first person -man or woman- to get it twice.

Fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays weaker than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, Marie Curie took his work a few steps further. Curie conducted her own experiments on uranium rays and discovered that they remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics. Curie herself coined the word "radioactivity" to describe the phenomena.

Following Marie’s discovery of radioactivity, she continued her research with her husband. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

Marie suffered a tremendous loss in 1906, when Pierre was killed in Paris after accidentally stepping in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution's first female professor.

In 1911, Marie Curie’s relationship with her husband's former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin's marriage, the negativity in part stemming from rising xenophobia in France.

Both of Marie Curie’s parents were teachers, and she was the youngest of five children, following siblings Zosia, Józef, Bronya and Hela. As a child Curie took after her father, Wladyslaw, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. However, tragedy struck early: When she was only 10, Curie lost her mother, Bronislawa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men's-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw's "floating university," a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies. For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math.

In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet. Curie completed her master's degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year.

## Role in the story

She is seen in the beginning of the story, discussing with Planck, Born and The Servant. Then, she joined the team as one of the main characters of the comic.

## Trivia

* Her second Nobel Prize was for Chemistry.
* She become a role model for female geniuses and has universities named after her.