Marie Curie: Warsaw to Paris

Marie Curie was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, then part of the Russian Empire. The family home stood on Freta Street in the New Town, and a plaque put up after her death in 1934 recorded her birth there. German forces deliberately demolished the building during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, but the plaque survived and went back up when it was rebuilt. Today number 16 houses the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum, opened in 1967 on the centenary of her birth.

Visitor guidance: Museum at Freta 16 in Warsaw's New Town.

Barred from regular university because she was a woman, Maria and her sister joined the clandestine Flying University, a Polish patriotic school that admitted women. Her first real laboratory work came in 1890–1891 at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture on Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, in a chemistry laboratory run by her cousin Józef Boguski. She tutored for money and saved for Paris, which she reached in late 1891.

Visitor guidance: The address is on Warsaw's Krakowskie Przedmieście.

In late 1891 Maria arrived in Paris and became Marie. After a short stay with her sister she rented a garret in the Latin Quarter and enrolled at the University of Paris. She lived on very little, tutoring in the evenings, and focused so hard on physics, chemistry and mathematics that she sometimes forgot to eat. She earned a physics degree in 1893 and a second degree in 1894.

Location precision: The sources name the University of Paris and a garret in the Latin Quarter, not a street; the pin marks the Sorbonne.

On 26 July 1895 Marie married the physicist Pierre Curie in the Hôtel de Ville of Sceaux, south of Paris. Neither wanted a religious service. She wore a dark blue outfit instead of a bridal gown, and it served her for many years as a laboratory outfit. The couple later lived in Sceaux, and Marie was first buried there beside Pierre.

Location precision: The sources say only Hôtel de Ville in Sceaux; the pin marks Sceaux's town hall today.

Visitor guidance: The Hôtel de Ville is in Sceaux, south of Paris.

On 19 April 1906 Pierre Curie was walking across Rue Dauphine in heavy rain when a horse-drawn vehicle struck him; he died instantly. The University of Paris then offered her his chair in physics, and she became its first woman professor.

Location precision: The sources name the street, not the exact crossing; the pin marks Rue Dauphine.

Visitor guidance: Rue Dauphine is an ordinary Paris street, still open to walkers.

The Institut du Radium was founded in 1909 by the University of Paris and the Institut Pasteur. Marie directed its Curie laboratory, and during World War One she used it to teach nurses about radiology. Her daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity here in 1934. The original 1914 laboratory building now houses the Musée Curie, part of Institut Curie.

Visitor guidance: The Musée Curie occupies the original laboratory building.

Marie died on 4 July 1934. She was buried at Sceaux beside Pierre, and in 1995 both were moved to the Panthéon, their remains sealed in lead because of radioactivity. She was the first woman honoured there on her own merits. Her notebooks are expected to stay radioactive for well over a thousand years.

Visitor guidance: The Panthéon on Place du Panthéon is open to visitors.