Author: Eve Curie
Pierre and Marie’s good fortune didn’t last long. In April 1906, one year after the Nobel Prize ceremony, Pierre died unexpectedly in an accident.
Marie’s grief over the loss of her great love turned into a long depression. She spent her days indoors, mourning in the dark. She was unable to deal with all of the problems that this sudden loss brought. She’d lost not only her husband but also her research partner. His income was gone, and Marie didn’t even know if she was allowed to continue to use his lab.
She eventually returned to everyday life, which was chock-full of new obstacles. Without a respected man vehemently vouching for her, it was even harder for Marie to be taken seriously as a scientist. However, Marie kept on pushing. She was eventually given a position at the Sorbonne and allowed to keep going with her work.
The Sorbonne, for example, needed to find a replacement for Pierre’s teaching position. Marie would have been the obvious choice, but the university still refused to offer a woman the prestigious position. Eventually, they settled on a half-measure: she was allowed to teach, but she wasn’t granted full professorship.
Still, as the first woman to receive a teaching position at the Sorbonne, Marie got quite a lot of media attention, which she didn’t indulge. She slipped unobtrusively into her first lecture through the side door, wearing what would become her trademark black. She spoke for a full hour very objectively about the last topic that Pierre had lectured about. She didn’t mention him at all.
A few years later, Marie applied to the Academy of Sciences, where Pierre had been a member. Gender bias reared its ugly head once again, and she was denied. But Marie pushed through life as a widow with characteristic stoicism. She researched, she taught, and she cared for her two daughters. All the while wearing black.
In 1911, five years after her husband's death, Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium – making her the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. But it wasn’t just her scientific curiosity that drove her work. Marie was also motivated by a deep altruism and sought to develop technologies that would save human lives.
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