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  • Essay / Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize

    World History I History is full of firsts: the first person to sail around the world, the first man to walk on the moon, the first to successfully climb Mount Everest. Unfortunately, many of these firsts do not involve women. For centuries, men have written and rewritten history with firsts. But two very important things were accomplished by one woman: Marie Curie. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'?Get the original essay Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win the prize in two separate categories. Born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867, Marya Sklodowska, later known as Marie Curie, received a general education with her father who taught her sciences on the side. Many other Polish women were not allowed to receive an education due to harsh Russian regulations. But since her parents were both educators, they demanded that their daughters be educated. Marie finished high school at the age of 15 and was top of her class. She ended up finishing her studies in Paris, France at Sorbonne University for further training. Then, in 1894, Marie met her future husband, Pierre Curie. Together, they worked in physics at the Sorbonne but later she put him in charge of the Physics Laboratory. During this period, women's roles focused on their married and domestic lives. Many would spend all their time making sure her husband was happy since he would be the only one working. Mary was different. Not only was she working, but she worked alongside her husband before becoming head of their department. In addition to working, she had two daughters, Irene, who followed in her mother's footsteps and won a Nobel Prize, and Eve Curie. Being an incredible mother and scientist proves that women are not as weak and fragile as people thought at that time. Inspired by the work of Henri Becquerels and William Roentgen, who discovered radioactivity, Curie decided to choose radioactivity as the subject of her research. Reports by Becquerels and Roentgen indicated that rays similar to X-rays were transmitted by uranium ore. Using her husband's instruments, she had the idea of ​​measuring the faint electrical currents she detected in the air filled with uranium rays. His work proved Becquerel's observation that the more uranium there is in an ore, the more the rays are intensified. After that, she launched her revolutionary hypothesis: an atomic property of uranium was the transmission of these rays. If this is true, the widely accepted theory that the atom is the smallest possible form of matter would be false. (https://www.livescience.com/38907-marie-curie-facts-biography.html) Curie had already proven a lot, but she looked deeper. She and Pierre were the first to make it possible to isolate radioactive isotopes for the first time in history. In this process, she discovered two new elements: polonium and radium. Which earned him Nobel prizes. The first being awarded to her, her husband and Henri Becquerels in 1903 for “contributions to the understanding of atomic structure” in the Physics category. Her second Nobel Prize, in 1911, was awarded to her after the death of her husband for the discovery of the radioactive elements polonium and radium. Marie Curie was a leader and a pioneer. She paved the way for many other scientific advances, for women scientists and for women who.