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Marie Curie was a Polish scientist – and is probably one of the most famous scientists of all time. She was born in the Polish city of Warsaw, but later moved to France where she made an incredible discovery which would change the world.

In France, she met her husband – a man called Pierre, who was also a scientist. Together, they built on work done by previous scientists and made discoveries which would earn them a Nobel Prize in 1903.

As if that wasn’t enough, Marie went on to win another Nobel Prize in 1911. She was the first woman in history to win it.

So what was this amazing work? Well, the Curies made ground-breaking discoveries about something called radioactivity. Radioactivity happens when certain special chemical elements give off energetic particles when a part of them called their nucleus breaks down.

This all sounds rather technical, but through this work, the Curies announced the discovery of two new chemical elements – polonium and radium.

And why was that so important? Well, first of all, their work was used to develop something called radiotherapy, which is used to treat certain illnesses.

These discoveries were also really important in developing X-rays, which are vital in hospitals today. It also meant that during World War One, Curie was able to develop a portable X-ray unit that could be used near the battlefront.

So if you ever find yourself in hospital having an X-ray, you now know who you should be thanking.

This entry was posted on March 9, 2021 at 3:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.