Here’s a concise yet honest overview of how men’s attitudes (especially in physics) toward women’s careers have evolved since Marie Curie’s era (late 19th to early 20th century):
Marie Curie Era (1890s–1930s)
- Dominant view: Women had no place in serious science.
- Curie was called “Pierre Curie’s wife” even after winning two Nobel Prizes.
- Male physicists openly said a woman’s brain was biologically incapable of original research.
- She was denied entry to the French Académie des Sciences (1911) explicitly because she was a woman.
- Praise for her was often backhanded: “remarkable for a woman.”
1940s–1960s (post-WWII & early Cold War)
- Slow shift: War effort proved women could do technical work (radar, Manhattan Project).
- There is still a widespread belief that women should leave science after marriage or children.
- Many top departments (Princeton, Caltech) remained all-male until the late 1960s–early 1970s.
1970s–1990s (Feminist wave & affirmative action)
- Legal changes (Title IX in the U.S., Sex Discrimination Act in the UK, etc.) forced universities to open doors.
- Male attitudes split:
– Younger generation began accepting women as peers, but unconscious bias remained heavy.
- “Imposter” trope was frequently projected onto women.
2000s–2010s
- Public rhetoric became strongly supportive (“of course women can do physics”).
– 2012 CERN survey: ~20% of male physicists agreed “women are less capable in abstract physics.”
– High-profile cases (Tim Hunt’s 2015 “trouble with girls in labs” comment) showed lingering old attitudes.
- Leaky pipeline remained stark: women ~20% of physics undergraduates → ~8% of full professors.
2020–2025 (Current era)
- Overt sexism is now career-damaging for men; younger male physicists genuinely support equality.
- Subtle biases persist:
– Letters of recommendation still use weaker language for women.
– Women’s papers are cited less when gender is known.
– “Brilliance bias” (physics still seen as requiring rare “genius,” stereotyped as male.
- Positive changes:
– Major conferences enforce codes of conduct.
– Departments compete to hire top women (market pressure helps).
– Men increasingly share parental leave normalizes work-life balance for both genders.
Marie Curie: The Woman Who Lit the World Twice
Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867–1934) remains the only person in history to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines—Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911). She discovered two elements, pioneered the theory of radioactivity, built the first mobile X-ray units, and laid the foundations of radiation therapy for cancer. Yet for much of her life she was treated as an anomaly, a “woman who accidentally did science.” Her story is one of staggering intellect, relentless work, and quiet defiance against a century before women could vote in most countries.
She was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska on 7 November 1867 in Russian-occupied Warsaw, Poland. Both parents were teachers who had lost everything for supporting Polish independence. The family lived under constant surveillance; Polish language and history were forbidden in schools. From childhood Marie learned that knowledge was both salvation and rebellion.
At 17 she and her elder sister Bronisława made a pact: Marie would work as a governess to fund Bronia’s medical studies in Paris; later Bronia would help Marie. For six bitter years Marie tutored wealthy families in the Polish countryside, secretly teaching peasant children to read at night, and fell in love with the eldest son of one household—only to be told by his parents that a penniless governess was an impossible match. The humiliation hardened her resolve.
In November 1891, at age 24, she finally arrived in Paris with one suitcase and registered as “M. Skłodowska” at the Sorbonne. She lived in a freezing Latin Quarter garret, sometimes fainting from hunger between lectures. She studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics, graduating first in her class in 1893 and second in mathematics the following year.
In 1894 a Polish physicist introduced her to Pierre Curie, already famous for work on piezoelectricity. Pierre was struck by her intensity. He wrote: “It would be a beautiful thing… to pass through life together hypnotized in our dreams: your dream for your country; our dream for humanity; our dream for science.” They married in a simple civil ceremony in July 1895; Marie wore a dark-blue dress she could later use in the lab.
Their partnership was legendary. They worked in a leaky shed on the rue Lhomond that was once a medical school dissecting room. Rain dripped through the roof; in winter the temperature fell below freezing; bitumen dust blackened their clothes. Marie tested every known element for the mysterious “rays” Henri Becquerel had discovered in uranium. One by one, compounds of thorium, then pitchblende ore, glowed far more than pure uranium could explain. She coined the word “radio-activity.”
On 18 July 1898 they announced the probable existence of a new element 400 times more active than uranium. They named it polonium, after Marie’s oppressed homeland. Five months later, after processing a ton of pitchblende residue gifted by the Austrian government, they isolated a second element—radium. The night they first saw radium’s pale blue glow in the dark shed, Pierre wrote, “It was like a fairy tale.”
The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Becquerel and the Curies. The Swedish Academy initially planned to omit Marie; Pierre insisted his wife’s contribution was equal. When they went to Stockholm, Marie was pregnant with their second daughter Ève and too ill to speak; Pierre gave the lecture for both. Fame brought money, but the couple refused to patent radium purification. Marie said, “Humanity needs practical people… but it also needs dreamers, for whom the unselfish pursuit of a goal so absorbs them that it becomes impossible for them to devote attention to their material benefit.”
Tragedy struck on 19 April 1906. Pierre, exhausted, slipped under a horse-drawn cart in a Paris street and was killed instantly. Marie was shattered. She refused a widow’s pension and accepted Pierre’s chair at the Sorbonne, becoming its first female professor. On 5 November 1906 she began her lecture with the exact sentence Pierre had ended with the previous spring. The hall was packed; many came to see if a woman would break down. She did not.
Alone, she pursued the isolation of pure radium metal for the first time. In 1911 she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry—unprecedented. Yet that same year she faced a vicious scandal. A widowed French physicist, Paul Langevin, had become her close friend. When his wife leaked love letters (most likely platonic), the press branded Marie a “foreign Jewish home-wrecker” (she was neither Jewish nor the aggressor). Crowds gathered outside her house shouting “Down with the foreigner!” The Swedish Academy suggested she not come to Stockholm for the second Nobel. She replied: “The prize has been awarded for the discovery of radium and polonium. I believe there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.” She went and accepted the prize with dignity.
During World War I, Marie saw soldiers dying from untreated wounds because X-ray facilities were hundreds of miles behind the front. She invented the “petites Curies”—mobile X-ray vans—and with 17-year-old daughter Irène learned to drive and develop radiographs herself. She equipped 20 vehicles and 200 fixed units, personally training 150 women operators. Over a million French soldiers were X-rayed, saving countless lives and limbs.
After the war she toured America twice (1921 and 1929) to raise money for her bankrupt Radium Institute. President Harding presented her with one gram of radium worth $100,000, donated by American women. She refused to keep it personally and gave it to her laboratory.
The radium that made her famous also killed her. Years of carrying test tubes in her pocket, working without shielding, and inhaling radon left irreversible damage. By 1934 she was almost blind from cataracts, anaemic, and in constant pain. On 4 July 1934 she died near Sallanches, France, of aplastic anaemia. Her laboratory notebooks are still so radioactive they are stored in lead-lined boxes at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; researchers must sign a waiver to consult them.
Marie Curie’s legacy is immense:
- She opened the door for women in science that had been welded shut.
- Her work founded nuclear physics and radiation oncology.
- The Curie (unit of radioactivity) and element 96 (curium) bear her name.
- Her daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie won the 1935 Nobel in Chemistry, making the only mother-daughter Nobel pair.
Yet she never saw full equality. When she died, Le Figaro wrote: “Madame Curie was the greatest woman in the history of France.” The condescension lingered even in praise.
Today, when a young woman walks into a physics department and is treated as just another brilliant mind—not an exception, not a token—Marie Curie’s quiet, stubborn life helped make that possible. She never shouted slogans. She simply did the work twice as hard, twice as well, and twice as long as anyone expected, until the world had no choice but to take notice.
She once said: “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
The ideas she gave us still glow in the dark, more than a century later.
Marie Curie’s Major Scientific Contributions
(Independent and joint work, in chronological order of impact)
Discovery of Radioactivity as an Atomic Property (1898, with Pierre Curie & Henri Becquerel)
- Proved that radioactivity is not a chemical or molecular phenomenon but originates in the atom itself — a revolutionary shift that founded nuclear physics.
Discovery of Two New Elements
- Polonium (July 1898) — named after her oppressed homeland.
- Radium (December 1898) — 900 times more radioactive than uranium.
- She processed tons of pitchblende ore by hand in a shed to isolate milligrams of pure radium salts.
First Isolation of Pure Radium Metal (1910)
After years of painstaking fractional crystallization, Marie and André Debierne produced the first visible sample of metallic radium. This work earned her the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — the first person ever to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences,
Establishment of Radioactivity as a Quantitative Science
- Defined the international standard for radioactive emissions (the “curie” unit, 3.7 × 10¹⁰ disintegrations per second).
- Developed precise measurement techniques using piezoelectric quartz electrometers (designed by Pierre) and ionization chambers.
- Created the first systematic tables of radioactive decay chains.
Theory of Radioactivity (1902–1903)
Formulated the idea that radioactivity involves spontaneous transmutation of one element into another — the first glimpse of what would later be understood as nuclear decay. She wrote: “Radioactive substances continuously create new matter.”
Pioneering Radiation Medicine
- During World War I, invented the “petites Curies” — 20 mobile X-ray units and 200 fixed radiological posts.
- Personally trained 150 women radiographers and performed over a million wartime radiographs, dramatically reducing amputations.
- Established the first military radiology centers and laid the groundwork for modern radiation therapy.
Foundation of Medical Radium Therapy
- After the war, created the Radium Institute in Paris (1914, now Institut Curie), the world’s first center dedicated to treating cancer with radium.
- Standardized radium needle and tube techniques are still used in brachytherapy today.
Training the Next Generation
Her laboratory produced four Nobel laureates:
- Herself (twice), Pierre Curie, Irène & Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and indirectly influenced many others (Marguerite Perey discovered francium there in 1939).
Creation of the International Radium Standard (1910–1921)
Personally, prepared the first 20-milligram international radium standard, sealed in a glass tube and deposited at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Sèvres — still the primary standard today.
Lifelong Documentation of Radiation Effects
Kept meticulous records of burns, anemia, and cataracts in herself and co-workers — the first systematic evidence of radiation hazards, decades before health physics existed.
Marie Curie did not merely discover radium and polonium — she invented the entire field of radioactivity, turned it into a precise science, proved its medical value, and paid for it with her life, all while forcing the male-dominated scientific world to acknowledge that the greatest physicist of her era was a Polish woman working in a shed.
Major Awards and Honors Won by Marie Curie
1903
- Nobel Prize in Physics
- Physics
- (shared with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel)
- “In recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint research on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”
1904
- Matteucci Medal (Italian National Academy of Sciences) – shared with Pierre
- Davy Medal (Royal Society, London) – shared with Pierre
→ First woman to receive the Davy Medal.
1911
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- (awarded solely to Marie)
- “In recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”
Other Notable Awards & Honors
(during her lifetime) **
- 1904: Osiris Prize (French Academy of Sciences) – with Pierre
- 1910: Elected corresponding member of the Bohemian Academy of Sciences (first woman)
- 1921: Benjamin Franklin Medal (American Philosophical Society) – first woman recipient
- 1921: John Scott Medal (City of Philadelphia)
- 1921: Willard Gibbs Medal (American Chemical Society)
- 1922: Ellen Richards Research Prize (American association of women scientists)
- 1924: Grand Prix du Marquis d’Argenteuil (large cash prize for scientific research)
Honorary Doctorates
(received 18 in total, including from):
- University of Geneva, Smith College, Yale, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Edinburgh, University of Manchester, Northwestern University, Jagiellonian University (Kraków), Polytechnic University of Lwów, University of Pennsylvania, etc.
Memberships in Academies
(elected despite fierce opposition in many cases)
- 1905: Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (first foreign woman)
- 1910: Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1921: Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences
- 1922: Honorary member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain
- 1924: Honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (first foreign woman)
Declined or Posthumous Recognition
- 1911: Denied full membership in the French Académie des Sciences (lost by 2 votes, largely because she was a woman and foreign-born)
- 1967: Element 96 named Curium (Cm) in her honor
- The unit of radioactivity (curie, Ci) was officially named after her and Pierre in 1910 and remains in use today.
Marie Curie remains the most decorated female scientist in history and the only person with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
The 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Controversy
(Affair Langevin + Nobel Prize Storm)
Background
By 1910 Marie Curie was already the most famous female scientist in the world. She was 43, a widow for four years, raising two daughters, and working relentlessly to isolate pure metallic radium (the achievement that would earn her the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry).
In early 1910 she began a close friendship with physicist Paul Langevin, Pierre Curie’s former student. Langevin, then 39, was unhappily married to Jeanne Desfosses, with whom he had four children. The marriage had been violent for years.
The Relationship
The exact nature of Marie and Paul’s relationship remains debated:
- They exchanged passionate letters (later stolen and published).
- They rented a small apartment near the Sorbonne for private meetings.
- Marie wrote: “I am still in the fever of this impossible dream… I want to see you every moment.”
- Paul wrote: “I dream of the day when we can live our love in the light of day.”
Historians today are divided: some see a full physical affair, others an intense emotional bond that may or may not have become sexual. Whatever the truth, both were consenting adults, but the French press and public did not see it that way.
November 1911: The Storm Breaks
- 4 November 1911: The right-wing newspaper L’Action française and others began publishing the stolen letters.
- Headlines screamed:
“A Foreign Woman Steals a French Husband”
“The Polish Jewess in the Home of a Frenchman”
(Marie was neither Jewish nor the initiator, but antisemitism and xenophobia were rampant.)
- Jeanne Langevin’s brother-in-law led a mob to Marie’s house in Sceaux; windows were smashed, and Marie and her daughters had to hide at a friend’s home.
- Paul Langevin fought a duel with pistols against the editor of Le Journal (both deliberately missed).
The Nobel Committee’s Reaction
On 6 November 1911 – while the scandal was at its peak – the Swedish Academy formally announced that Marie Curie had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (unopposed; the vote was unanimous).
A week later, a member of the Academy, Svante Arrhenius (1903 Nobel laureate), wrote a private letter to Marie strongly advising her not to come to Stockholm in December:
“If the Academy had known about this scandal, it would never have awarded you the prize this year… Your coming to Stockholm would greatly damage the reputation of the Nobel Prize.”
Other Swedish newspapers echoed the French press, calling her a “homewrecker.”
Marie’s Response
Marie replied to Arrhenius with one of the most famous letters in scientific history (23 November 1911):
“The prize has been awarded for the discovery of radium and polonium. I believe there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of my private life… I cannot accept the principle that the appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by libel and slander concerning private life.”
She booked her train ticket to Stockholm immediately.
10 December 1911 – The Ceremony
Marie arrived in Stockholm with Irène and her sister Bronisława.
- The audience was packed; many came expecting drama.
- She walked to the podium with complete calm, wearing a simple black dress.
- She delivered her Nobel lecture in French on the chemistry of radioactive substances — no mention of the scandal.
- King Gustaf V personally handed her the medal and diploma.
- The Swedish press, impressed by her dignity, reversed tone overnight and praised her courage.
Aftermath
- Paul Langevin eventually separated from his wife (1914) but never lived openly with Marie.
- Marie suffered a severe depression and kidney operation in 1912, spending almost a year recovering in England under a false name.
- The scandal permanently damaged her health and reputation in conservative French circles, but internationally it paradoxically increased her fame as a symbol of female resilience.
Long-term Irony
The same society that tried to destroy her in 1911 now universally celebrates her as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived — and the only person with two Nobel Prizes in different sciences.
Marie herself never spoke publicly about the affair again. Her laboratory notebook entry for the day she received Arrhenius’s letter simply reads:
“Worked on radium preparation. Received an unpleasant letter from Sweden. Continued work.”
CONCLUSION
From “a woman cannot do serious physics” (Curie’s era) → “of course she can, but she probably isn’t one of the very best” ( lingering stereotype today).
The door is now open and most men will cheer when a woman walks through, but many still unconsciously expect her to be the exception rather than the rule.
Real equality will arrive when a female physicist winning the Nobel is no longer seen as “remarkable for a woman,” but simply remarkable. We’re closer than ever, yet not there yet.