Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska , was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win twice in multiple sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth7 November 1867
CountryPoland
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
I shall devote only a few lines to the expression of my belief in the importance of science … it is by this 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.
It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.
In science we must be interested in things, not in persons.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.
After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.
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.
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 mankind.
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
Nothing in this world is to be feared... only understood.
I was taught that the way of progress I neither swift nor easy.
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecr