WEBVTT

00:00:07.069 --> 00:00:10.558
If you want a glimpse 
of Marie Curie's manuscripts,

00:00:10.558 --> 00:00:13.409
you'll have to sign a waiver and put on
protective gear

00:00:13.409 --> 00:00:16.718
to shield yourself 
from radiation contamination.

00:00:16.718 --> 00:00:21.187
Madam Curie's remains, too,
were interred in a lead-lined coffin,

00:00:21.187 --> 00:00:24.052
keeping the radiation that was the heart
of her research,

00:00:24.052 --> 00:00:27.858
and likely the cause of her death,
well contained.

00:00:27.858 --> 00:00:31.078
Growing in Warsaw 
in Russian-occupied Poland,

00:00:31.078 --> 00:00:34.671
the young Marie, originally named
Maria Sklodowska,

00:00:34.671 --> 00:00:38.868
was a brilliant student,
but she faced some challenging barriers.

00:00:38.868 --> 00:00:42.498
As a woman, she was barred from pursuing
higher education,

00:00:42.498 --> 00:00:44.519
so in an act of definace,

00:00:44.519 --> 00:00:47.479
Marie enrolled in the Floating University,

00:00:47.479 --> 00:00:52.859
a secret institution that provided
clandestine education to Polish youth.

00:00:52.859 --> 00:00:55.679
By saving money and working
as a governess and tutor,

00:00:55.679 --> 00:01:00.549
she eventually was able to move to Paris
to study at the reputed Sorbonne.

00:01:00.549 --> 00:01:03.660
There, Marie earned both a physics
and mathematics degree

00:01:03.660 --> 00:01:05.940
surviving largely on bread and tea,

00:01:05.940 --> 00:01:09.010
and sometimes fainting 
from near starvation.

00:01:09.010 --> 00:01:11.840
In Paris, Marie met the physicist 
Pierre Curie,

00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.099
who shared his lab and his heart with her.

00:01:15.099 --> 00:01:17.620
But she longed to be back in Poland.

00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:19.239
Upon her return to Warsaw, though,

00:01:19.239 --> 00:01:21.879
she found that securing 
an academic position as a woman

00:01:21.879 --> 00:01:23.620
remained a challenge.

00:01:23.620 --> 00:01:25.020
All was not lost.

00:01:25.020 --> 00:01:27.401
Back in Paris, 
the lovelorn Pierre was waiting,

00:01:27.401 --> 00:01:31.141
and the pair quickly married and became
a formidable scientific team.

00:01:31.141 --> 00:01:35.119
Another physicist's work sparked
Marie Curie's interest.

00:01:35.119 --> 00:01:41.181
In 1896, Henri Becquerel discovered
that uranium spontaneously emitted

00:01:41.181 --> 00:01:47.070
a mysterious X-ray-like radiation that
could interact with photographic film.

00:01:47.070 --> 00:01:51.551
Curie soon found that the element
thorium emitted similar radiation.

00:01:51.551 --> 00:01:55.001
Most importantly, 
the strength of the radiation

00:01:55.001 --> 00:01:57.262
depended solely on the element's quantity,

00:01:57.262 --> 00:02:00.781
and was not affected by physical
or chemical changes.

00:02:00.781 --> 00:02:04.492
This lead her to conclude that radiation
was coming from something fundamental

00:02:04.492 --> 00:02:07.371
within the atoms of each element.

00:02:07.371 --> 00:02:08.663
The idea was radical,

00:02:08.663 --> 00:02:14.041
and helped to disprove the long-standing
model of atoms as indivisible objects.

00:02:14.041 --> 00:02:18.442
Next, by focusing on a super radioactive 
ore called pitchblende,

00:02:18.442 --> 00:02:23.914
the Curies realized that uranium alone
couldn't be creating all the radiation.

00:02:23.914 --> 00:02:28.524
So, were there other radioactive elements
that might be responsible?

00:02:28.524 --> 00:02:32.455
In 1898, they reported two new elements,

00:02:32.455 --> 00:02:35.407
polonium, named for Marie's native Poland,

00:02:35.407 --> 00:02:38.433
and radium, the latin word for ray.

00:02:38.433 --> 00:02:42.384
They also coined the term radioactivity
along the way.

00:02:42.384 --> 00:02:48.715
By 1902, the Curies had extracted a tenth
of a gram of pure radium chloride salt

00:02:48.715 --> 00:02:51.287
from several tons of pitchblende,

00:02:51.287 --> 00:02:53.536
an incredible feat at the time.

00:02:53.536 --> 00:02:56.476
Later that year, Pierre Curie 
and Henri Becquerel

00:02:56.476 --> 00:02:59.336
were nominated for 
the Nobel Prize in physics,

00:02:59.336 --> 00:03:01.105
but Marie was overlooked.

00:03:01.105 --> 00:03:04.767
Pierre took a stand in support
of his wife's well-earned recognition.

00:03:04.767 --> 00:03:11.226
And so both of the Curies and Becquerel
shared the 1903 Nobel Prize,

00:03:11.226 --> 00:03:16.116
making Marie Curie the first female
Nobel Laureate.

00:03:16.116 --> 00:03:20.047
Well funded and well respected,
the Curies were on a roll.

00:03:20.047 --> 00:03:24.686
But tragedy struck in 1906 when Pierre
was crushed by a horse-drawn cart

00:03:24.686 --> 00:03:27.037
as he crossed a busy intersection.

00:03:27.037 --> 00:03:29.887
Marie, devastated, immersed herself
in her research

00:03:29.887 --> 00:03:32.816
and took over Pierre's teaching position
at the Sorbonne,

00:03:32.816 --> 00:03:36.057
becoming the school's 
first female professor.

00:03:36.057 --> 00:03:38.356
Her solo work was fruitful.

00:03:38.356 --> 00:03:40.728
In 1911, she won yet another Nobel,

00:03:40.728 --> 00:03:44.867
this time in chemistry for her earlier
discovery of radium and polonium,

00:03:44.867 --> 00:03:49.348
and her extraction and analysis of
pure radium and its compounds.

00:03:49.348 --> 00:03:51.527
This made her the first, 
and to this date,

00:03:51.527 --> 00:03:56.368
only person to win Nobel Prizes
in two different sciences.

00:03:56.368 --> 00:03:58.959
Professor Curie put 
her discoveries to work,

00:03:58.959 --> 00:04:02.218
changing the landscape of medical research
and treatments.

00:04:02.218 --> 00:04:05.347
She opened mobile radiology units
during World War I,

00:04:05.347 --> 00:04:08.779
and investigated radiation's
effects on tumors.

00:04:08.779 --> 00:04:12.768
However, these benefits to humanity
may have come at a high personal cost.

00:04:12.768 --> 00:04:15.979
Curie died in 1934 of 
a bone marrow disease,

00:04:15.979 --> 00:04:19.679
which many today think was caused
by her radiation exposure.

00:04:19.679 --> 00:04:22.764
Marie Curie's revolutionary research

00:04:22.764 --> 00:04:26.016
laid the groundwork for our understanding
of physics and chemistry,

00:04:26.016 --> 00:04:31.319
blazing trails in oncology, technology, 
medicine, and nuclear physics,

00:04:31.319 --> 00:04:33.423
to name a few.

00:04:33.423 --> 00:04:37.334
For good or ill, her discoveries 
in radiation launched a new era,

00:04:37.334 --> 00:04:40.320
unearthing some of 
science's greatest secrets.