Marie Curie was born in Warsaw on November 7^th, 1867. She received general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father.

As  a brilliant and mature student, Marie harboured the dream of a scientific career, which was impossible for a woman at that time. To save money for a study tour abroad, she had to work as a private tutor, and her studies were interrupted.

Finally  in   1891,  Marie,  with very  little money to live on, went to Paris to realise her dream at the Sorbonne. In spite of her difficult living conditions, she worked extremely hard. She earned a degree in Physics with flying colours, and went on to take another degree in Mathematics. She met Pierre Curie in the School of Physics in 1894 and a year later they got married. From then on, they worked together on their research. In 1903, Marie became the first woman to receive a PhD from the Sorbonne.

After the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took up the position which her husband had obtained at the Sorbonne. Thus, she was the first woman in France to be a university professor. Soon after, she was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determining the atomic weight of radium. But her real joy was "easing human suffering". The founding of the Radium Institute in 1914 made her humanitarian wish come true.