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Marie Curie was an amazing modern female physicist ahead of her time. Her father secretly sent Marie to France in 1891 to study Physics and Maths at the Sorbonne - because at the time, women were not allowed to go to university in Poland.

Marie Curie herself completed the vast majority of the research work and the associated physically demanding process of grinding, dissolving, filtering, precipitating, collecting, redissolving, crystallising and recrystallising 20 kg batches of pitchblende.

Her extraordinary efforts resulted in the discovery of the element radium, radioactivity and the element polonium. Yet, in the then male dominated society of the time, she had to unfairly share credit for HER scientific discoveries with her husband Pierre.

Short video clip of Alan Alda discussing the life of Marie Curie, who was the subject of his 2011 play Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie.

https://www.britannica.com/video/Alan-Alda-work-subject-Marie-Curie-Radiance-2011/-218158

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brilliant reminder, thanks Caroline!

Judy

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