THE UNRELENTING WOMAN OF STEEL

Table of Contents

MARIE CURIE

In an era where applause were almost nonexistent, where laboratories were nothing of magnificence, where all you do is work with no one to sing your praise, or capture and publicise your activities, there was a woman who saw something, a woman who wanted to make an impact on the world, who wanted to make the world a better place.

Born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, in the then Kingdom of Poland under the Russian Empire; her story is not one of inherent privilege, but of ferocious will. She was barred from higher education in her homeland, but journeyed to Paris after saving up her wages from her live-in teaching job, and lived on bread and tea so she can feed her mind; and in a society that saw science as a man's domain, she became the first woman in France to earn a doctorate in physics. She was not merely persistent, she was undaunted.

Before Marie Curie, the atom was considered a solid, immutable billiard ball. She looked at the strange rays Henri Becquerel discovered and saw a universe humming with secret energy. She and her husband Pierre, named this phenomenon radioactivity, a word that now echoes through every corridor of modern science. Gram by gram, she extracted from tons of ore two new elements, "polonium" named after her beloved, oppressed Poland, and "radium" which glowed with an unnatural blue light in the dark. She proved that matter itself could transform, could whisper its own history, could hold a dazzling and terrible power.

Her relentless research in medicine gave birth to radiotherapy. The very element that scarred her hands brought light into the deepest darkness of disease. With the advent of the X-ray, she created about twenty mobile radiography units called "Little Curies" and drove them to the bloody trenches of World War I, to help battlefield surgeons in the treatment of wounded soldiers. She trained her own daughter to operate them, saving countless soldiers from death by unseen shrapnel. She gave the world a tool to see the unseen within us, to fight battles at the cellular level.

She changed what was possible. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win it twice, and remains the only person to win in two different scientific fields, Physics and Chemistry; she and her husband were also the first married couples to win the Prize. She did not climb a ladder; she built one, rung by rung, for every woman in science who dared to follow. In her, we see the irrefutable proof that genius is not gendered, that curiosity belongs to all of humanity.

In her story, we see that the work of changing the world is not often done in castles, but in sheds; not in the spotlight, but in the shadows; and it is not fueled by the desire for fame, but by an insatiable need for knowledge. The greatest discoveries often come from looking where others see nothing.

When the journey ahead feels impossible, when the resources are meager, and doubters shout the loudest, remind yourself that you carry something more powerful than your struggles, that the potential within you is greater than the challenges in front of you. Your mind is your laboratory, your perseverance is your element. Go, and make an impact; you too, can leave a light that outshines darkness for generations to come. Be curious, be relentless, be undaunted.

365 men who changed the world.

Kamikun John, Author 366 days of wisdom.