Born on a cold November night For necessities, she had to fight Her mother died when she was ten She gave up on religion there and then School, she passed with flying colors But colleges were for his, and not for hers Yet Flying University took her in Along with her elder kin A mathematician was her first love But her father gave his warmth a shove Seeing him poor, the father waved him away And he admired her beauty Till his dying day She worked hard, she did, she used to study all day Books and letters and anything that she saw on her way Her father helped her all he could He felt that touch the skies, she should Her practical training began soon after In a museum lab, she found each answer To all the questions of her scientific mind That would go on to help all of mankind She shifted to Paris and studied there In a condition that was meagre and bare In the harsh winter, she was often caught And she fainted from hunger, more often than not She studied by the day, and taught by the eve Barely enough to survive, money she’d receive Soon enough, though, she won through in academics Being awarded for her efforts a degree in physics She began work in an industrial lab Away from her apartment drab With a fellowship and a little wear She won another degree next year She began to research on properties of steel And that’s when her life turned like a wheel Because this lab was the place where She met her husband, Pierre Their mutual passion for the study of science Bought them closer to an alliance Until, finally, on a summer day Pierre stole her heart away The dress she wore as a bridal gown Would be her lab coat, for years down They loved cycle trips, both of them This lady finally found her gem Scientists saw rays of kinds unknown That were, from uranium, easily grown She was so curious about all this That she decided to write on it, a thesis Her husband and brother had made a machine That on showing electric current would glow green And using that invention, she found The rays made the air electric all around She and her husband didn’t have a lab But then, they barely earned enough to rent a cab Unaware that the radiation could kill They worked in a leaky shed with determined will Her studies showed that while uranium made rays Minerals with it showed it in more dramatic ways So she said, that these minerals must contain A much more active substance, if only a grain And in a few years, she did realize Thorium also had radioactive ties In the same year, they discovered polonium And as the winter came, saw traces of radium And the couple published, in years hence Thirty two papers, that revealed suspense Including one that said radium destroyed Tumor cells faster than the healthy ones employed The Royal Institute of London called the two To talk about radioactivity, what they knew But she was not allowed to speak Because she was a woman, “feeble and meek” Radium was turned into an industry The duo could have received a large fee But they chose not to patent their work And struggled while the rich gave them a smirk This woman made history In the year nineteen hundred and three When she was the first female, so wise As to be awarded the Physics Nobel Prize Her work reached a new, dizzying height And after years of toil and might She isolated radium, faster than any monsieurs Which led to a Chemistry Nobel Prize becoming hers Who is this miracle woman, you ask? How did she undertake such task after task? The first woman scientist to achieve fame Marie Curie was her name