Abstract

MUNOZ PAEZ, Adela. Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Radioactivity. Educ. quím [online]. 2013, vol.24, n.2, pp.224-228. ISSN 0187-893X.

There is no other woman in the history of science better known than Marie Curie. She was the first woman Professor at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, after more than six hundreds years, the first woman to obtain a Nobel Prize, the first scientist to obtain a second. But above all these honours, Marie was a passionate person, whose curiosity and spirit of adventure kept her alive beyond the limits of her strength. It is astonishing how there are still some persons, usually men, that still consider her as an assistant of her husband, neglecting the relevance of her discovery, the radioactivity. It is even more difficult to understand how distorted is the picture of her that had reached us, that of a sad women, wearing always black dresses. And Marie was just the opposite: a lively and passionate woman, who devoted her life to science as everybody knows, but did many other things as well: fought to defend her country and loved passionately her daughters and the men she felt in love with, specially her husband.

Keywords : Marie Curie; Pierre Curie; radioactivity; polonium; radium; Henry Becquerel; Irene Joliot-Curie.