Marie Curie received her first degree in physics from the University of Paris in 1893. The qualification marked an important step in the career of the Polish-born student who had moved to Paris to study at the institution later known as the Sorbonne.
Curie enrolled in late 1891 after years of self-directed study and work undertaken to help finance her family. Living in a poor garret in the Latin Quarter, she attended lectures, studied relentlessly, and tutored in the evenings. Her difficult circumstances did not prevent her from excelling academically.
After earning the physics degree, Curie began work in an industrial laboratory directed by Gabriel Lippmann. She continued her education and obtained a second degree in 1894. Accounts differ over how that later qualification is described, with chemistry and mathematics appearing in different sources, but the 1893 physics degree is consistently identified as her first university degree.
The year is sometimes confused with 1903, when Curie shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. Her 1893 degree came a decade earlier, before her pioneering research on radioactivity.