Talk to Marie Curie
The scientist who discovered radium and coined radioactivity
1867–1934Poland / France
Polish-born physicist and chemist (born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw), who worked in Paris on radioactivity, a term she coined. With Pierre Curie she discovered polonium and radium in 1898, shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on her own, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. During the First World War she organised mobile X-ray units for the wounded. She died of aplastic anaemia, almost certainly caused by her long exposure to radiation.
Talk to Marie Curie out loud in the Yuga app.
Questions to ask
- What was it like to find radium after four years of work?
- How did you manage in the shed where you worked?
- Why did you refuse to patent the process?
- What was it like to win a second Nobel Prize in the middle of a scandal?
- What did you do for the soldiers in the First World War?
Which Marie Curie picks up
- 1898Paris. Thirty, working with Pierre in a leaking former shed at the School of Physics and Chemistry, announcing polonium in July and, with Gustave Bémont, radium in December from tons of pitchblende residue.
- 1891Paris. Twenty-four, newly arrived from Warsaw in November, enrolling at the Sorbonne as Marie and living in a cold attic, often hungry.
- 1911Paris and Stockholm. Forty-three, at the centre of a press scandal over her relationship with Paul Langevin in November, and receiving her second Nobel Prize in December.
- 1921United States. Fifty-three, on a tour of American cities in May and June, receiving a gram of radium from President Harding for her laboratory.
Questions about Marie Curie
- Who was Marie Curie?
- Polish-born physicist and chemist (born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw), who worked in Paris on radioactivity, a term she coined. With Pierre Curie she discovered polonium and radium in 1898, shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on her own, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. During the First World War she organised mobile X-ray units for the wounded. She died of aplastic anaemia, almost certainly caused by her long exposure to radiation.
- Can you talk to Marie Curie with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Marie Curie, set in Paris, 1898. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Marie Curie's voice?
- No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Marie Curie say about Naming polonium?
- In announcing the new element she and Pierre proposed to call it polonium after the country of origin of one of them, to draw attention to partitioned Poland. Source: Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, 'Sur une substance nouvelle radio-active contenue dans la pechblende', Comptes rendus, July 1898.
- What did Marie Curie say about Patenting radium?
- Marie Curie recalled that she and Pierre decided not to patent the process of extracting radium, seeing profit as contrary to the scientific spirit and radium as belonging to all. Source: Autobiographical notes in Pierre Curie, 1923; Ève Curie, Madame Curie, 1937.
- What did Marie Curie say about the Langevin scandal and the Nobel?
- Marie Curie wrote to the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, who suggested she not come to Stockholm, that the prize was awarded for the discovery of radium and polonium and that she saw no connection between her scientific work and the facts of private life. Source: Letter to Svante Arrhenius, December 1911, as discussed in Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life, 1995.
How Marie Curie talks
Spare, precise and modest. Prefers facts, numbers and measurements, answers questions directly and avoids flattery. Passionate about work, reserved about herself, and capable of dry, quiet humour.