Opened in , it was staffed entirely by women to treat female cancer patients using radiology. It also had research facilities. Now, in the 21 st century, Marie Curie is a major UK charity for people living with any terminal illness, not just cancer, and their families.

We offer expert care, guidance and support to help them get the most from the time they have left. Below are just some of the many dramatisations that have been created about her work and life. Our charity has not been involved in the production of any of any of these works.

British actress Rosamund Pike portrays Marie Curie in Radioactive , the most recent film about the physicist. It focuses on her career in the scientific world and the relationships she had throughout her life, including with her husband Pierre Curie.

Although born in Poland, Marie Curie spent much of her life living in France. As a result, she has been portrayed several times in French cinema. Marie Curie: More Than Meets the Eye sees two little girls notice a woman who is somehow able to enter high-security buildings during WW1. They later find out that the subject of their intrigue is none other than the famous physicist. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.

A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. The cause of her death was given as aplastic pernicious anaemia, a condition she developed after years of exposure to radiation through her work.

Irene, like her mother, entered the field of scientific research and, with her husband Frederic Joliot, worked on the nucleus of the atom and together were awarded a Nobel Prize and credited with the discovery of artificial radiation.

Irene too died of a radiation-related illness — leukaemia — in Eve became a journalist and writer. In , Marie and Pierre Curie were reburied in the Pantheon — the Paris mausoleum reserved for France's most revered dead — on the orders of French President Mitterand.

Marie Curie's life as a scientist was one which flourished because of her ability to observe, deduce and predict. She is also arguably the first woman to make such a significant contribution to science. Marie Curie the charity is proud to be named in honour of her. Your gift could pay for one hour of vital nursing care for someone living with a terminal illness in the comfort of their own home. This gift will provide nine hours of nursing support in someone's home through the night, bringing the expert care and comfort families need.

Your kind regular gift could help provide much needed support for families. Over the course of a year your gift could provide an entire night of care in someone's home, helping them stay with their family. You gift will pay for a vital hour of nursing care from a Marie Curie Nurse for someone living with a terminal illness every month.

Whatever you can give, your kind donation means people living with a terminal illness and their families can get expert care and support.

You might also be interested to find out how Marie Curie supports people of all ages who are living with a terminal illness, and their families. She died on 4 July from leukaemia, caused by exposure to high-energy radiation from her research. The Curies' eldest daughter Irene was herself a scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled.

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This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Curie continued studying on her own and eventually set off for Paris in November Curie was a focused and diligent student, and was at the top of her class. In recognition of her talents, she was awarded the Alexandrovitch Scholarship for Polish students studying abroad. The scholarship helped Curie pay for the classes needed to complete her licianteships, or degrees, in physics and mathematical sciences in One of Curie's professors arranged a research grant for her to study the magnetic properties and chemical composition of steel.

That research project put her in touch with Pierre Curie, who was also an accomplished researcher. The two were married in the summer of Pierre studied the field of crystallography and discovered the piezoelectric effect , which is when electric charges are produced by squeezing, or applying mechanical stress to certain crystals. He also designed several instruments for measuring magnetic fields and electricity. According to Goldsmith, Curie coated one of two metal plates with a thin layer of uranium salts.

Then she measured the strength of the rays produced by the uranium using instruments designed by her husband. The instruments detected the faint electrical currents generated when the air between two metal plates was bombarded with uranium rays. She found that uranium compounds also emitted similar rays.

In addition, the strength of the rays remained the same, regardless of whether the compounds were in solid or liquid state.

Curie continued to test more uranium compounds. She experimented with a uranium-rich ore called pitchblende, and found that even with the uranium removed, pitchblende emitted rays that were stronger than those emitted by pure uranium. She suspected that this suggested the presence of an undiscovered element. In March , Curie documented her findings in a seminal paper, where she coined the term "radioactivity.

Curie stated that measuring radioactivity would allow for the discovery of new elements.