She was born in Warsaw, in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curieand with physicist Henri Becquerel. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that the Curies coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, poloniumand radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I, she established the first military field radiological centres.
While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska Curie (she used both surnames)[3][4] never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland.[5] She named the first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native country.[a]
Curie died in 1934 at the sanatorium of Sancellemoz