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Marie's Childhood & Family Life

Marie Salomea Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 7 November 1867. She was the fifth and youngest child of the well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski. Her father lectured in maths and physics both subjects Marie went on to pursue herself. The elder siblings of Marie were Zofia, Józef, Bronisława and Helena. In May 1878, when Marie was only ten years old, her mother died of tuberculosis. Less than three years earlier, Marie's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus.

When she was ten years old, Marie began attending the boarding school of J. Sikorska. Next, she attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883 with a gold medal. After a collapse, possibly due to depression, she spent the following year in the countryside with relatives and the next year with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.

Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education because she was a woman, she and her sister Bronisława became involved with the Clandestine Flying University. She tutored, studied at the Flying University, and began her practical scientific training in a chemical laboratory. In late 1891, she left Poland for France. She proceeded with her studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the University of Paris.

In 1893, she was awarded a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory. In 1894, with the aid of a fellowship, she was able to earn a second degree. Skłodowska began her scientific career with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels. That same year, Pierre Curie entered her life. Pierre Curie was an instructor. Though Curie did not have a large laboratory, he was able to find some space for Skłodowska where she was able to begin work.

Their mutual passion for science brought them increasingly closer and on 26 July 1895, they were married in Sceaux. On September 12, 1897, Marie and Pierre Curie gave birth to their first kid Irène Joliot-Curie, and on December 6, 1904, they gave birth to their second kid Ève Curie. Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, France, of aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation.