Marie Curie connection to Michael Currie
Marie Curie (born Maria Salomea Skłodowska; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who did pioneering research on radioactivity. She is the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in two different sciences: physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.[1]
Because Michael Currie and Marie Curie have last names that sound alike, Michael is sometimes asked whether they are related.
The short answer is no - the names are merely false cognates.
Marie Curie was not born a Curie. She was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, daughter of Władysław Skłodowski and Bronisława Boguska. She took the name Curie when she married the French physicist Pierre Curie in 1895.[1][2] So her own blood family is Polish, and the name "Curie" came from a French family she married into. Neither side has any known link to Michael's family.
As with any two people of European descent, Michael and Marie Curie most likely share a common ancestor who lived around 1400 or later. That is true of almost any two Europeans, so it does not count as a real family connection.[3]
More details
Where "Curie" comes from
Pierre Curie was born in Paris on 15 May 1859, the son of Eugène Curie (28 August 1827 – 25 February 1910 (aged 82)).[2] Eugène was "a doctor of French Huguenot Protestant origin from Alsace."[2] Eugène's father was also a doctor:
Pierre Curie's grandfather, Paul Curie (1799–1853), a doctor of medicine.
According to Ancestry, the French surname Curie comes "from a reduced form of Old French éscuerie 'stable', hence a metonymic occupational name for a stable hand."[4]
Where "Currie" comes from
Michael's last name comes from John Currie, a Scot born in Galashiels, Scotland in 1846. John came to Canada on 8 June 1883 to work in the woollen mills of Almonte, Ontario. His youngest son Alex settled in Winnipeg, Alex's son Jack settled in Thunder Bay, and Jack's son Ron stayed in Thunder Bay and had Michael.
The Scottish surname Currie is a place name, taken from the village of Currie near Edinburgh. It comes from a Scottish Gaelic or Brythonic word for a wet or boggy plain, or for a dell (a small, sheltered, partly wooded valley). See the entry for ? Currie.
So the two names only sound alike. "Curie" is a French job name (stable hand), and "Currie" is a Scottish place name. They have different origins and different spellings.
Linguists call a pair like this false cognates: words that look and sound alike but have no shared origin. The term is related to false friends, which are words in two languages that look alike but mean different things, whether or not they share a root (for example, the English "gift" and the German Gift, "poison"). Curie and Currie are false cognates because they have unrelated roots, not just different meanings.
Timeline
| Date | Currie family John Currie → Alex Currie → Jack Currie → Ron Currie → Michael Currie |
Curie family Paul Curie → Eugène Curie → Pierre Curie (married Maria Skłodowska) → Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève Curie |
|---|---|---|
| 1799 | Paul Curie born.[2] | |
| 28 August 1827 | Eugène Curie born. | |
| 1846 | John Currie born in Galashiels, Scotland. | |
| 15 May 1859 | Pierre Curie born in Paris.[2] | |
| 7 November 1867 | Maria Salomea Skłodowska born in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire.[1] | |
| 8 June 1883 | John Currie arrives in Canada. | |
| 1889 | Alex Currie born. | |
| 1891 | Maria moves to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.[1] | |
| 26 July 1895 | Maria marries Pierre Curie at the town hall in Sceaux and takes the name Curie.[2] | |
| 1897 | Daughter Irène born. She later won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.[1] | |
| 1898 | The Curies announce the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium.[1] | |
| 1903 | Marie and Pierre Curie share the Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel.[1] | |
| December 1904 | Daughter Ève born.[1] | |
| 19 April 1906 | Pierre Curie is killed in a street accident in Paris.[2] | |
| 25 February 1910 | Eugène Curie dies. | |
| 1911 | Marie Curie wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on her own.[1] | |
| June 1914 | Alex Currie marries. | |
| 10 June 1915 | Jack Currie born. | |
| 4 July 1934 | Marie Curie dies of aplastic anaemia at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, France.[1] | |
| 5 October 1947 | Ron Currie born to Jack. | |
| 8 June 1982 | Michael Currie born to Ron. | |
| 1995 | Marie Curie's remains are moved to the Panthéon in Paris.[1] |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 "Marie Curie."[website].Wikipedia.Link.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 "Pierre Curie."[website].Wikipedia.Link.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ "Charlemagne's DNA and our universal royalty."[website].National Geographic.2013-05-07.Link.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)
- ↑ "Curie surname meaning."[website].Ancestry.Link.(Rights: unknown | Access: open)