How did sugar beets help a woman win
two Nobel Prizes?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
January 29, 2002
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Maria's homeland had been divided between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Her childhood was spent under Russian rule. Czar Alexander II had been a reformist, but his reforms were only attempts to prop up the existing system.
Laws had been instituted; only Russian could be spoken, classes were cut from curriculums, the poor were forbidden education, and any thoughts of reunification brought retribution from the Czar's supervisors. Maria's father lost his position as a math and physics teacher, Maria's mother died
when she was ten.
Maria graduated first in her class from high school at fifteen; but she would not be allowed to further her education in occupied Poland. With the family's poor financial condition, she could not seek education elsewhere.
Maria began tutoring the children of the rich, finally taking a position as governess for the Zorawski family. Zorawski ran a beet sugar factory. Maria began her life of crime against czarist Russia.
She taught the children of factory workers to read, write, and do basic math. Her 'letters' to her father were an upper level mathematics course. A chemist in the beet sugar factory began teaching her chemistry and laboratory procedures in secret. Her cousin's colleague intensified the studies on Sundays and at night. Maria saved her governess's salary.
The Czar had a problem. He wanted the wealth of an industrial society, but he also wanted the old two class system of rulers and peons. The Czar needed his sugar beet industry and chemists to run it. (See Plants that Changed History, November 13, 2001)
The sugar beet industry provided the door for Maria's education and money.
Maria left Poland for Paris. She changed her name to Marie and attended the Sorbonne. Marie married Pierre Curie and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.
The Nobel Prize website has more information about Marie Curie. To learn more about her life as a scientist, click on the link:
http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading:
Something about that cane sugar Plants that Changed History - February 17, 2004
Could a natural horror benefit sugar beet growers? Renfield's Garden - November 14, 2001
What twelve plants supply most of the food our world consumes? Plants that Changed Hist - 8/21/01
How did the Spanish break Arab control of the sweet spice? Plants that Changed History - 11/06/01
How did sugar beets help a woman win two Nobel Prizes? Plants that Changed History - 11/29/02
What medicinal root is a common vegetable today? Herbal Folklore - November 12, 2001
Lord Nelson, Napoleon, and the Silesian Beet Plants that Changed History - November 13, 2001
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