Residence 1
📍Maria Curie Birthplace, Freta Street, Warsaw, Poland
1867 – 1891“I was born Maria Sklodowska on the 7th of November 1867 in Warsaw, in a flat on Freta Street in the New Town district, the fifth and youngest child of two teachers. Poland was under Russian partition and my father Władysław taught physics and mathematics in Russian-controlled schools, managing to pass to me a love of science despite the obstacles the occupation placed before Polish intellectual life. Women were not permitted to study at Warsaw University, and so I participated in the clandestine Floating University — illegal classes held in private apartments — before eventually going to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. I left Warsaw at twenty-four and never truly returned to live there, but the city was always present in me — the Polish language, the Polish patriotism, the memory of a father who showed me that science was the most honest way of understanding the world.”
👍 LovedMy father's passion for science and his determination to educate his children despite the constraints of Russian occupation. The Warsaw intellectual community that found ways to learn and teach despite prohibition. The Polish pride and patriotism that never left me even after decades in France.
👎 DislikedThe Russian occupation that denied Polish women access to university education. The poverty of a teacher's family in occupied Warsaw. The knowledge that my country's intellectual life was being systematically suppressed.
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Quinn, S. Marie Curie: A Life (1995), Simon & Schuster; Curie, E. Madame Curie (1937, translated Vincent Sheean), Doubleday; Dry, S. Curie (2003), Haus Publishing
Residence 2
📍Freta Street 16, 00-227 Warsaw, Poland
1867 – 1891“I was born Manya Sklodowska in Warsaw on the seventh of November 1867, fifth child of two schoolteachers. Russia occupied Poland, and science was dangerous — the authorities suppressed Polish education. My sister Bronya went to Paris first on our arrangement: I worked as a governess to pay for her medical degree; she would fund mine. At twenty-four I finally came to the Sorbonne, speaking French with a Polish accent, living on bread and chocolate, studying until I could no longer see. It felt like oxygen.”
👍 LovedThe secret floating university where Polish women taught each other the science that Russia forbade us
👎 DislikedThe grinding poverty of Tsarist Poland, which closed doors based on language and religion rather than ability
🗺️ Approximate location today
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Residence 3
📍1 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005 Paris, France
1914 – 1934“The Institut du Radium was built for me after my second Nobel Prize — the first person ever awarded the prize in two different sciences, which did not prevent the Académie des Sciences from refusing my membership because I was a woman. My laboratory on the street they eventually renamed for Pierre and me became the entire world of my later years. I carried vials of radium in my coat pockets, left samples on the bookshelves at home, kept it in open dishes on my desk. I knew it was dangerous — the burns on my fingers and the cataracts forming in my eyes were sufficient evidence. I did not stop because stopping was not in my nature and because the science was not finished. I died on the fourth of July 1934 of aplastic anaemia caused by radiation. My personal notebooks are still radioactive. They are kept in lead-lined boxes in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Researchers who wish to read them must sign a waiver. I find that satisfying in a way I cannot entirely explain.”
👍 LovedThe laboratory itself — the smell of chemicals and the precise weight of a sample in a calibrated dish, which was where I was most entirely myself
👎 DislikedThe scientific establishment's refusal to accept that a woman could produce results that men could not, and the press intrusion following the Langevin affair that made working in Paris temporarily impossible
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
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