Marie Curie Trivia
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47 free Marie Curie trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Marie Curie trivia quiz covers the Polish-born physicist and chemist who coined the word radioactivity, discovered two elements in a leaky Paris shed, and became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win in two different sciences. The easy questions cover the landmarks: her birthplace, her husband, the two elements, the two prizes and the unit and element that bear her name. From there the quiz moves through the Flying University, the governess years, the pitchblende, the 1906 accident on the Rue Dauphine, the Langevin scandal and the Radium Institute. The harder half is for readers of Ève Curie's biography: the mathematician who nearly married her, the electrometer, the tonne of ore that yielded a tenth of a gram of radium chloride, the Little Curies of the First World War, the gram of radium from President Harding, the Academy vote she lost by a whisker, the radioactive cookbooks and the lead-lined coffin in the Panthéon. Every answer was checked against Marie Curie's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Nobel Prize, chemistry and famous scientists quizzes next.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Paris research institute co-founded Curie's Radium Institute?
Pasteur Institute
Pasteur Institute: its director Émile Roux launched the project, and a Pasteur lab studying radiation's effects on living things worked beside Curie's.
Q 02What was Curie's maiden name?
Skłodowska
Skłodowska: she used both surnames, taught her daughters Polish and took them on visits to Poland.
Q 03Besides Marie Curie, who is the only person awarded Nobel Prizes in two different fields?
Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling: after his Chemistry prize, he won the Peace Prize for campaigning to stop nuclear weapons testing.
Q 04Marie Curie's son-in-law Henry Labouisse led which organisation when it won the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize?
UNICEF
UNICEF: the United Nations created it in 1946 to bring food and medicine to children and mothers hit by the Second World War.
Q 05Radium takes its name from the Latin word for what?
Ray
Ray: the name honoured the energy radium gives off as rays, and in 1910 Curie finally isolated it as a pure metal.
Q 06Why did Marie and Pierre Curie skip the 1903 Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm?
Too ill and busy to travel
Too ill and busy to travel: they finally made the trip in June 1905, when Pierre gave his Nobel lecture.
Q 07Which sensitive instrument, developed by Pierre Curie and his brother, did Marie use to measure uranium's activity?
An electrometer
An electrometer: her measurements showed uranium's rays were a property of the atom itself, not of its chemistry.
Q 08Which uranium ore, four times as active as uranium itself, led Curie to suspect an unknown element?
Pitchblende
Pitchblende: the new elements were so scarce in it that the Curies had tonnes of the ore shipped in from Joachimsthal in Bohemia.
Q 09Radium was hard for the Curies to isolate because it most closely resembles which element chemically?
Barium
Barium: their ore held both, so they separated radium by repeated crystallisation, reaching about a decigram of radium chloride by 1902.
Q 10Where did the Curies carry out most of their radium research?
A converted shed next to ESPCI
A converted shed next to ESPCI: the visiting chemist Wilhelm Ostwald called it a cross between a stable and a potato shed.
Q 11Curie's early higher education in Warsaw came through which clandestine institution that admitted women?
The Flying University
The Flying University: an underground network teaching in Polish, it defied the Russian Empire's control over Warsaw's schooling.
Q 12While working as a governess to fund her sister's studies, Curie fell in love with which future mathematician?
Kazimierz Żorawski
Kazimierz Żorawski: his parents refused to let him marry her because her family was poor.
Q 13Curie's cousin Józef Boguski, who ran the Warsaw lab where she first trained, had assisted which chemist?
Dmitri Mendeleev
Q 21Which Swedish Nobel committee member urged Curie to stay away from her 1911 prize ceremony?
Svante Arrhenius
Svante Arrhenius: she replied that her scientific work had no relation to her private life, and went to Stockholm anyway.
Q 22What were the mobile X-ray units Marie developed for First World War field hospitals nicknamed?
Petites Curies
Petites Curies: she fitted vans with X-ray equipment and generators, and trained young women to work as X-ray aides.
Q 23In July 1916, what did Marie Curie obtain so she could take her X-ray work to the front herself?
A driving licence
Dmitri Mendeleev: he left gaps in his periodic table and correctly predicted what missing elements such as gallium would be like.
Q 14Curie's first commissioned scientific work in Paris investigated the magnetic properties of what?
Various steels
Various steels: needing a larger lab for the project, she was introduced to Pierre Curie, who a friend thought might have space.
Q 15Which pastime did newlyweds Marie and Pierre Curie take up to relax together?
Cycling
Cycling: they spent money received as a wedding present on a bicycle each, and long rides became their way to relax.
Q 16Curie's 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared with Pierre and which other scientist?
Henri Becquerel
Henri Becquerel: the French Academy's nomination named only him and Pierre, until a committee member tipped Pierre off and he insisted Marie be included.
Q 17How did Pierre Curie die in April 1906?
Struck by a horse-drawn vehicle in the rain
Struck by a horse-drawn vehicle in the rain: his sudden death left Marie to raise their two young daughters.
Q 18In 1906 Curie became the first woman to hold what post?
Professor at the University of Paris
Professor at the University of Paris: she took over Pierre's chair after his death, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne.
Q 19Curie's 1911 election bid to the French Academy of Sciences failed narrowly to which inventor?
Édouard Branly
Édouard Branly: his coherer, an early detector of radio waves, was developed further by Guglielmo Marconi for wireless telegraphy.
Q 20Curie's affair with which physicist, a former student of Pierre's, caused a press scandal in 1911?
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin: letters stolen from his flat were leaked to the press, which cast Curie as a foreign home-wrecker.
A driving licence: she then drove one of the X-ray vans herself and went regularly to the front to take radiographs.
Q 24What did the French National Bank refuse to accept from Curie when war broke out?
Her gold Nobel medals
Her gold Nobel medals: when the bank turned them down, she put her Nobel Prize money into war bonds instead.
Q 25Curie's 'radium emanation' needles used a gas later identified as what?
Radon
She used them to sterilise infected tissue, drawing on her own one-gram supply of radium.
Q 26Which US president presented Curie with a gram of radium at the White House in 1921?
Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding: journalist Marie Mattingly Meloney had raised the money, and he presented the gram on behalf of the women of America.
Q 27Which French decoration did Marie Curie refuse, as Pierre had done before her?
The Legion of Honour
The Legion of Honour: Pierre had turned it down saying he saw no need to be decorated, and Marie refused it in 1909.
Q 28After Pierre's death in 1906, what did Marie Curie refuse to accept?
A pension
A pension: she answered that she was perfectly able to support herself.
Q 29From 1922 Curie sat on a League of Nations body alongside Einstein and Bergson. What was it called?
The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation
She served on it until 1934 and joined the International Atomic Weights Committee in 1930.
Q 30Who became the first director of the Warsaw Radium Institute when it opened in 1932?
Curie's sister Bronisława
Curie's sister Bronisława: Marie's second American tour, in 1929, raised the radium that equipped the institute.