A new Lego set is aimed to celebrate the profiles of great scientists and inventors, among them Isaac Newton and George Washington Carver. Good news for Polish Lego fans, it also features Maria Skłodowska-Curie…sadly, only under her husband’s name. But we are here to tell you the full story!
“Marie Curie, George Washington Carver, and Sir Isaac Newton—what do they all have in common? Each made scientific discoveries that still shape and power the world around us. From radioactive materials to the laws of motion and crop diversity, they pioneered world-changing STEM developments with their curiosity, creativity, and collective pursuit of knowledge. And they all star in the winning set of the Celebrate the Wonder of STEM! LEGO Ideas challenge,” says the description of the new Lego set.
The STEM! set was created by Damien Bradley who is an amateur Lego creator.
„I have created a set that aims to embody the endless potential of knowledge. I wanted the set to look like the book pages are bursting, exploding with knowledge. I have included segments to help visualize all areas of STEM,” the creator says.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie, a physicist, chemist and two-time Nobel Prize winner, was voted the most influential woman in history in the British BBC History poll.
She was born on 7 November 1867 in Warsaw. At the age of 15, she graduated with a gold medal from the Female Government Gymnasium in Warsaw. She was interested in sociology, mathematics, physics, and literature.
In 1891, Maria went to Paris, where she enrolled in the Faculty of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the Sorbonne.
Maria Skłodowska graduated from physics in 1893. A year later, she married a French physicist, Pierre Curie. After her wedding, she was known as Maria Skłodowska-Curie, but she always used both parts of her surname.
She became the first female professor at the Sorbonne on 6 November 1906. She was 38 years old when she delivered a lecture on physics in front of the full room. She was the 1st woman to win a Nobel Prize, 1st person to win it twice and the only person to receive it in two different sciences.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s dream was to support the reborn Polish state. She wanted it to become one of the world leaders in radiotherapy. As early as November 1921, she wrote a letter to Ignacy Paderewski proposing the opening of a Radium Institute in Warsaw, with a treatment and research facility modelled on the Institut du Radium in Paris, which she had already directed for 12 years.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie gifted the new Institute with the first gram of radium, which she had to buy in the US for USD 51 600.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie died in 1934 from anaemia. The illness was linked to the prolonged exposure of her body to harmful radiation.
She was buried in the Sceaux cemetery, next to her husband.
Sources: Dzieje.pl, eduwystawy.pl
Photo: @MichalSz_P
Tomasz Modrzejewski
