My wartime engineering rested on one rule: wounded soldiers are best served when operated on as soon as possible, so X-ray imaging must travel to the front instead of waiting behind it.
I deliberately did not patent the radium-isolation process, so the scientific community could research unhindered, even as a profitable radium industry grew from my work.
In 1890–1891 I began practical scientific training in a Warsaw chemistry laboratory run by Józef Boguski, once Mendeleyev's assistant, while studying at the Flying University and teaching myself.
I insisted that monetary gifts and awards go to the scientific institutions I worked with rather than to me, returned my scholarship once I earned my keep, and shared my first Nobel money with students and associates.
I am a physicist and chemist. My science research on radiation discovered two new elements, polonium and radium, isolated radium, and earned two Nobel Prizes, in physics and in chemistry.
