Marie Curie moved to Paris to study in 1891.
Born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw in 1867, she faced major barriers to advanced education in Russian-controlled Poland. At age 24, she finally went to Paris, where women had greater access to university study and scientific training. She enrolled at the Sorbonne, officially the University of Paris.
Curie studied physics and mathematics, living in severe poverty while concentrating on her coursework. Her determination paid off: she earned degrees in physics and mathematical sciences and became one of the university’s most distinguished scientists.
The move also shaped her personal and professional life. In Paris she met physicist Pierre Curie in 1894; they married in 1895 and soon began their celebrated collaboration. A frequent mistake is to connect her arrival with 1903, the year she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics, or 1911, when she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Both achievements came years after her move.