Biography | Marie Curie — First Woman to Lecture at the Sorbonne

On 5 November 1906 Marie Curie delivered her inaugural lecture as chargé de cours in the physics amphitheatre of the Sorbonne. Six months earlier Pierre Curie had been killed by a horse-drawn cart on rue Dauphine. The Faculty of Sciences decided not to leave his chair vacant and appointed Marie to continue both the teaching and the direction of the laboratory. She became the first woman to teach at the University of Paris. The lecture drew a large audience of students, journalists and members of the public; the room was filled to capacity. She began exactly where Pierre had left off, speaking quietly and precisely about the properties of radioactive substances. Two years later she was named full professor, the first woman to hold a professorial chair at the Sorbonne. Photo: Melusin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)