What is Marie curies main contribution to science?

Answer 1

Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist best known for her pioneering work with radioactivity in France alongside her husband, the French physicist Pierre Curie.

Although not the one to discover the phenomenon, Marie Curie was the first to coin the term "radioactivity." The Curies were the first to discover and isolate the element Polunium, so named by Marie in honor of her birth country. They also discovered Radium along with developing a method for isolating radioactive isotopes.

Madame Curie developed and supervise the first radiation treatments for tumors, and during World War I established the first field radiology labs with mobile X-Ray machines of her design.

To accomplish all this, both Marie and her husband worked long hours teaching to afford the cost of their research - Marie herself was the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Curie is remembered as a humble woman highly regarded by her peers; her work in the fields of physics did not go unnoticed. In addition to a number of honorary degrees, awards and publications, Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, an honor she shared with her husband for their work in Physics in 1903. She is also the only woman to ever win the Nobel Prize twice: she earned one for her work in Chemistry in 1911. Winning in both Chemistry AND Physics also makes her the only person to ever have been awarded the prize in two different subjects.

One sad irony about Marie's life, and something for which she is known nearly as well as the discoveries already noted, is that she essentially died from overexposure to radiation - many speculate it was from her work with the field X-Ray machines during WWI, but it's likely a combination of all her time spent working with radioactive materials ... never realizing the powerful dangers that came with the powerful possibilities radioactive materials offer.

Answer 2

Marie's scientific studies began with the research of a phenomenon for which she later coined the word "radioactivity". Marie worked jointly with Pierre and Henri Becquerel, a French scientist, and in 1903 they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics due to their work with radioactive material and the discovering of its properties. Today radioactivity is used in cancer treatments, molecular Biology, modern genetics, as well as the dating of artifacts.

Marie also discovered polonium, which was named after her native land of Poland, and radium in 1898, chemicals which she devoted the rest of her life to studying. Marie discovered how to isolate these elements so that they might be used for useful causes, such as cancer therapy. In addition, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for discovering the method used to isolate pure radium. Marie also developed a process called Curietherapy with the help of Pierre, a process that was used to treat malignant tumors at the time.