In a leaky, unheated shed in Paris, a Polish woman stirred boiling vats of ore with an iron rod nearly as tall as she was. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre were racing to isolate a substance no one had ever seen, and they would spend years on it.
Born Maria Skłodowska in Russian-ruled Warsaw, she had studied in a secret underground university because women weren't allowed into higher education. She worked as a governess to help fund her sister's medical studies, then finally reached Paris at 24. Her discoveries of polonium and radium changed physics and medicine forever, and she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
Then her husband died suddenly in a street accident, and she kept going alone. She won a second Nobel in 1911, and she remains the only person honored in two different scientific fields. When World War I broke out, she took X-ray machines to the front lines to help treat wounded soldiers.
I'm working on growing this project: researching, writing, narrating, and sharing the real stories of women history forgot or never told enough about — available in the Lilithia app in both Turkish and English.
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📱 App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.busrwa.lilithia
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