Madame Curie Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sklodowska

She was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland. Her birthday was November 7, 1867, the fifth of five children. At the time Warsaw was under Russian control, but she grew up a Polish national who deeply resented the Russian suppression of the Polish people.

One interesting thing came out of the Russian-Polish connection. Her cousin who taught her how to work in a laboratory had once worked as an assistant to Dmitri Mendeleev, the father of the periodic table.

Answer: Paris

She attended the Sorbonne in Paris. Due to financial difficulties and taking the time to help her older sister through school, she didn't enroll there until she was 24, despite the fact that she had graduated high school at the age of 15.

She earned Master's degrees in both physics and math. Several years later she earned a doctorate.

Answer: Pierre Curie

Marie met Pierre while searching for lab space. She encouraged him to write up his research which earned him his doctorate. Lab work was an important part of their lives as it was discoveries in the lab that led directly to the Nobel Prize.

Answer: Physics

1903 was the third year that Nobel Prizes were awarded. She and her husband shared it with Henri Becquerel for their work on radioactivity. Becquerel had discovered that uranium was a natural radioactive element and the Curies furthered his research.

Answer: Run over by a horse drawn carriage

Although in the past he had been ill from careless handling of radioactive elements (the dangers of radioactivity were not yet understood), his health had been improving. While returning from a luncheon where he spoke, he was hit while crossing the street and killed. Ironically, his speech at the luncheon included the idea of drafting legal codes to prevent laboratory accidents.

Answer: Polonium and Radium

Marie's early research into the radioactivity of uranium led her to realize that impurities in her sample were the result of other radioactive elements. She was able to use this evidence to describe the properties of polonium which she named after her native country and radium which was named after its radioactive properties.

After several years of work she was able to isolate a small sample of pure radium within the pitchblende she was using.

Throughout the 20th century, Marie was the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two distinct fields.

Answer: X-Ray wounded soldiers to diagnose their injuries

Along with her daughter, Marie opened several mobile x-ray labs and used the new technology to help treat wounded soldiers. This enabled surgery to be performed where the shrapnel was located in the body rather than rely on the surgeon fishing around for it once the body was opened.

Answer: Irene

Irene Joliot-Curie shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry with her husband Frederic for their work on artificial radioactivity. At the age of 17, Irene had helped her mother x-ray wounded soldiers in World War I. Earlier in his career, Frederic Joliot-Curie had worked as an assistant to Marie.

Marie and Pierre had another daughter Eve who was a journalist, forgoing the family tradition of research science. Staying out of science may have prolonged Eve's life as she died in 2007 at the age of 102.

Answer: 1934

Her health had been declining for many years due to exposure to radiation before passing away on July 4, 1934. Unfortunately this meant she did not live to see her daughter win the Nobel Prize the following year.

Answer: First woman to give birth to quintuplets

In 1903 she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She followed this up in 1911 by becoming the first person of either gender to win two Nobel Prizes (although she probably would have shared the second with her husband had he lived, making them jointly the first to win two).

When her husband Pierre was killed in an accident, the University of Paris offered her his vacated professorship.

When she died in 1934, she was buried next to her husband. However, in 1995, their graves were both moved to the Pantheon, the historic French burial place.