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Marie Curie
(7 Nov 1867 - 4 Jul 1934)
Polish-French chemist and physicist whose celebrated experiments (1898) on uranium minerals led to discovery of two new elements: polonium and radium. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. She was then sole winner of a second Nobel Prize in 1911, this time in Chemistry.
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Marie Curie Quotes on Science (8 quotes)
>> Click for 29 Science Quotes by Marie Curie
>> Click for Marie Curie Quotes on | Radioactivity |
>> Click for 29 Science Quotes by Marie Curie
>> Click for Marie Curie Quotes on | Radioactivity |
After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.
— Marie Curie
'Memorandum by Madame Curie, Member of the Committee, on the Question of International Scholarships for the advancement of the Sciences and the Development of Laboratories', League of Nations, International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation: Sub-committee of Experts for the Instruction of Children and Youth in the Existence and Aims of the League of Nations. (Recommendations. Preamble): Issue 5, Issues 9-13 (1926), 12.
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. 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. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.
— Marie Curie
During a debate in Madrid, ',The Future of Culture' (1933). In Eve Curie Labouisse, Eve Curie and Vincent Sheean, Madame Curie (1937), 341
I learned easily mathematics and physics, as far as these sciences were taken in consideration in the school. I found in this ready help from my father, who loved science and had to teach it himself. He enjoyed any explanation he could give us about Nature and her ways. Unhappily, he had no laboratory and could not perform experiments.
— Marie Curie
About her childhood schooling. As translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg in Marie Curie, 'Autobiographical Notes', Pierre Curie (1923), 188. [Her father, Władysław Skłodowski, had studied Physics and Mathematics at the St. Petersburg University. For the early years of his career, he was a teacher in Warsaw schools. —Webmaster]]
I shall devote only a few lines to the expression of my belief in the importance of science for mankind…. … [I]t is by…daily striving after knowledge that man has raised himself to the unique position he occupies on earth, and that his power and well-being have continually increased.
— Marie Curie
In opening paragraph of 'Memorandum by Madame Curie, Member of the Committee, on the Question of International Scolarships for the Advancement of the Sciences and the Development of Laboratories' published by the League of Nations, Committee on Intellectual Co-operation, Geneva (16 Jun 1926)
I then [in 1902] possessed one decigramme of very pure radium chloride. It had taken me almost four years to produce the kind of evidence which chemical science demands, that radium is truly a new element. … The demonstration that cost so much effort was the basis of the new science of radioactivity.
— Marie Curie
As translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg in Marie Curie, 'Autobiographical Notes', Pierre Curie (1923), 188.
In science we must be interested in things, not in persons.
— Marie Curie
In Eve Curie, Madame Curie (1938), 233.
It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.
— Marie Curie
As quoted in Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium, Nobel Lecture
We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.
— Marie Curie
Lecture at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (14 May 1921). In Cambridge Editorial Partnership, Speeches that Changed the World, 53.
See also:
- 7 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Curie's birth.
- More for Marie Curie on Today in Science History page.
- Madame Curie: A Biography, by Eve Curie. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Marie Curie.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
