With the help of her husband, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie discovered two new elements. They named the first one Polonium, after Marie’s home country. The second one was named Radium after the latin word Radius, meaning ray. During their time researching they wrote multiple papers documenting their journey into discovering both of them. Both of the elements' existences were confirmed by 1902 just four years after their initial discovery. 

When world war 1 struck in 1914, Marie was determined to help soldiers the best she could and created portable X-rays. She used vans, trucks, limousines, etc, that were donated to her and transformed them into makeshift “radiological cars” and took them to the battlefield to treat and diagnose wounded soldiers. She trained women to help her operate and divided the work amongst all of them, including herself. Theconversation and Famous Scientists estimate that her units helped over one million soldiers. 

When Marie established the Radium Institute with the intention of exploring more of its medical uses, things went terribly. The radium which she wanted to use to study was never patented so she never received any benefits. On top of that though, just a gram of radium was $120,000, which would be at least 4 million dollars in today’s money. So it was no surprise that Marie wasn’t able to afford enough of it for study. Things changed, however, when she was interviewed by Marie Mattingly Meloney, nicknamed Missy. After hearing her story, Missy wanted to help Marie. At that time the US had already created 50 grams of radium so Marie asked if she could get one gram of radium for her institute to study. Missy was determined to help so she started a campaign to raise 100,000 dollars to get her 1 gram of radium. The campaign was a giant success and Marie was able to get her gram of radium.