Maria Skłodowska-Curie recognized as the most influential woman in history

Maria Skłodowska-Curie was named the most influential woman in history in a poll by BBC History Magazine. The pioneering physicist and chemist, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, surpassed the m.in. Margaret Thatcher or Princess Diana.

The editors of BBC History Magazine asked their readersów o selectór of the most influential women in history from the list of 100 figures. The list was compiled by 10 expertsóin the róof different scientific fields.

Maria Skłodowska-Curie overtook African-American Rosa Parks in the list of the world’s 100 most influential women – a symbol of the fight against racial segregation, and Emmeline Pankhurst – British social activist, one of the coótear of the founders of the suffragette movement.

Further down the list were m.in. mathematician Ada Lovelace, considered to be twóI make wspóThe world’s leading nurse Florence Nightingale, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writer Jane Austen, Princess Diana and the first female pilot Amelia Earhart.

– Skłodowska-Curie can boast an incredible array of achievements. She was the first woman whoóra was awarded the Nobel Prize; the first female professor at the University of Paris and the first person – note: person, not just woman – whoóra received the Nobel Prize for the second time,” explained the head of the British Association for the History of Science, Patricia Fara, whoóra reported that the candidacy of Polish woman.

Fara added that Sklodowska, who was born in Warsaw, had a difficult start due to the persecution of her patriotic family in Poland under Russian annexation, and in France "as a foreigner she was treated with suspicion and discriminated against on the basis of her gender".

As noted, Polka "she was a woman zaróboth in deed and intellect", and during World War I, she helped equip mobile ambulatory units for x-rays and even sat behind the wheel herself, driving them to the front lines of the.

Olivette Otele of the University of Bath, she added "Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Rosa Parks functioned in very different realities because of their race and social class, but there are interesting similarities in their stories".

– Education changed their situation as 20th-century women living in male-dominated societies. Both fought prejudice and successfully found a place for themselves, she assessed.

Maria Skłodowska was born on November 7, 1867. in Warsaw as the fifth child of a pair of teachers. In 1883. She graduated from the gymnasium. As women were not inótime in Poland admitted to universities, she studied at the underground Flying University. For several years she tutored, with the help of which sheórych financed the medical studies of her sister, Bronislawa. Her sister, in turn, helped Marie support herself while studyingóIn her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris (begun in 1891.). She had previously supplemented her knowledge of chemistry and physics in the laboratories of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street in Warsaw. There she learned methods of chemical analysis, które póShe was later able to use in work that enabled her to isolate radium and polonium.

This includes wspólne interests led Maria to marry Peter Curie. Together they discovered the elements of radioactivityórcze – polonium and radium, they also invented the very term "radiotwórarity". In 1903. Along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, Skłodowska-Curie was wyrówho was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for her research on radiationórity, and in 1911 – the Nobel Prize in chemistry – for her research on the properties of polonium and radium and methods of obtaining these elementsów, especially metallic radium. Skłodowska was a pioneer of a new branch of chemistry – radiochemistry and the treatment of canceróin radiation.

Sklodowska’s time, there were more than 1,800 students in the Sorbonne’s science facultyóin only 23 were women. Studying physics and mathematics there, Skłodowska lived in a cold attic and ate so little that she sometimes fainted from hunger and exhaustion. However, she found the strength to be active in a patriotic youth organization, in which sheóreg wspóshe worked m.in. with future President Stanislaw Wojciechowski. Many years póLater, at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Radium Institute in Warsaw, the president reminded her that when he was away on a secret political mission, she lent him a pillow. and she countered that the pillows still do not return theócił.

In 1909. Skłodowska met Albert Einstein during a celebration of theóAt the 350th anniversary of the University of Geneva, where they both received their Phóin honor of. They made a closer acquaintance only two years póLater, at a congress in Brussels in 1911., organized by Ernest Solvey, in which theórym were participating óearly most prominent European physicists. Only then did Skłodowska-Curie and Einstein have the opportunity to talk quietly and get to know each other better.

In 1911, the., Even before Maria was awarded her second Nobel Prize, a scandal erupted. News of the affair between the scientist (she had already been widowed for 5 years) and married physicist Paul Langevin appeared in the press. Óearly public opinion was outraged at the "alien". In defense of her good name, newspaper editors challenged each other to sword duels, and Paul Langevin himself challenged the editor-in-chief to a duel "L’Oeuvre". Albert Einstein then wrote a letter of support: "If the mob continues to attack you, just stop reading this nonsense".

During World War I, Skłodowska organized an X-ray service, which wasóra helped hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers, and saved many of their lives. By móc to drive an ambulance carrying field screening equipment, became one of the first women to earn a driver’s license. She was even in advanced positions at Verdun. Along with it rode an older córka, Irena.

Sklodowska died on July 4, 1934 at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, France, from aplastic anemia, a disease caused by radiation. Experts believe that more than working with radiotw materialsórationales for her untimely death at the age of 66 – she was harmed by the thousands of x-rays she took during World War I using primitive equipment.