In 1898 she and her husband Pierre Curie discovered two new, radioactive elements in pitchblende ores: polonium and radium. They isolated the pure elements 1902. Both scientists refused to take out a patent on their discovery and were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics 1903, with Henri Becquerel. Marie Curie wrote a Treatise on Radioactivity 1910, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1911. From 1896 the Curies worked together on radioactivity, building on the results of Wilhelm Röntgen (who had discovered X-rays) and Becquerel (who had discovered that similar rays are emitted by uranium salts). They took no precautions against radioactivity and Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning. Her notebooks, even today, are too contaminated to handle. Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, then under Russian domination. She studied in Paris from 1891 and married in 1895. In 1906 she succeeded her husband as professor of physics at the Sorbonne; she was the first woman to teach there. Marie Curie discovered that thorium also emits radiation and found that the mineral pitchblende was even more radioactive than could be accounted for by any uranium and thorium content. In July 1898 the Curies announced the discovery of polonium, followed in Dec of that year with the discovery of radium. They eventually prepared 1 g/0.04 oz of pure radium chloride - from 8 tonnes of waste pitchblende from Austria. They also established that beta rays (now known to consist of electrons) are negatively charged particles. In 1910 with Andre Debierne (1874-1949), who in 1899 had discovered actinium in pitchblende, Marie Curie isolated pure radium metal. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Curie helped to equip ambulances with X-ray equipment, which she drove to the front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its Radiological Service.
