Plot

The incredible true story of Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her Nobel Prize-winning work that changed the world.

In 1934, Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike) collapses in her laboratory in Paris. As she is rushed to the hospital, she remembers her life.

In 1893 Marie was frequently rejected for funding due to her attitude. Marie met Pierre Curie (Sam Riley) in 1894 at a random street when she ran into him and Pierre saw her book and saw she is interested in radioactivity.

Marie is a professor at a French university and shares lab space with Gabriel Lippmann (Simon Russell Beale). But she is not respected as she is a female and Polish, and her experiments and lab equipment are constantly moved without her agreement. Marie's sister advises her to apologize, but Marie is stubborn and won't.

Marie runs into Pierre again at the theatre and is shocked to know that Pierre knows her name. She is one of the only 23 female scientists in Paris, has read her paper on magnetic properties of steel, and has heard of her fight with Lippmann. Pierre is a renowned scientist and offers his lab for experiments to Marie. She is insistent that she won't be Pierre's mistress and won't accept interference in her experiments.

Soon, she figures that the Uranium Ore is more potent than the element itself and theorizes the existence of a new element. Marie is afraid of hospitals as her mother died in one and doesn't accompany Pierre to the Paris hospital for an equipment that will help them identify elements in microscopic quantities.

Marie theorizes that Uranium atoms are giving off some sort of energy and transforming into a new element. Up till that point, the uranium effect was considered a chemical reaction with the air. Soon, Pierre marries Marie. Paul Langevin (Aneurin Barnard) is their lab associate. She continues her experiments with more bigger quantities of Uranium Ore. Soon, she is pregnant. She gives birth to Irene Curie (Anya Taylor-Joy). Marie and Pierre are able to isolate a pin-prick of Radium & Polonium from 4 tons of uranium ore. Marie also coins the term "Radioactivity" for the rays coming from these "unstable" atoms.

The results are accepted by the scientific community and Pierre makes professor at a prestigious university. Marie is pregnant again. She sleeps with a vial of radium in her bed and soon Pierre falls sick. Pierre convinces Marie not to patent Radium so people can discover the possibilities of their new science. Marie sees Radium being used for X rays and even as a possible cure for cancer. Radium is soon used in a series of commercial products. Pierre takes Marie to a seance where it is used to attempt to contact the dead, but Marie disapproves of spiritualism and the idea of an afterlife after the death of her mother in Poland.

Pierre develops a bad rash on his wrist from exposure to Radium and Marie is pregnant again. Ève Curie (Cara Bossom) is born. In 1903 Marie and Pierre win the Nobel prize for discovery of radioactivity. Pierre talks about the dangers of radioactivity (which ultimately lead to the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima in 1945). Marie is super angry at Pierre for going to the ceremony alone (Marie had just given birth) and she thinks Pierre stole her brilliance and made it his own.

Pierre's coughing grows and he begs Marie to leave Paris, but she won't budge. Pierre has a coughing fit on the street and runs into a horse carriage and is crushed underneath. Marie is inconsolable. Marie is offered Pierre's job at the university, but she declines at first. Paul advises her to accept Pierre's death and move on.

Marie initially dismisses concerns that her elements are toxic but increasing numbers of people die from serious health conditions after exposure to radium. Marie is defenseless and starts an affair with a considerate Paul. Although she receives Pierre's professorship at the Sorbonne, the French nationalist press reports the details of her affair with Langevin and she is harassed by xenophobic mobs due to her Polish origins.

A few months later Paul confirms studies that have linked Radioactivity as the source of cancer. Soon, Paul's wife releases details of their scandal to the press. Marie is disgraced and asked to leave France. Paul leaves Marie under threat from his own wife. Marie returns to the house where she attended the seance and tearfully begs her friend, Loie Fuller, who was there to try to use Radium to contact Pierre.

Marie wins the Nobel prize again in 1911 for chemistry. She defies the committee's instructions not to travel to Stockholm and at her award ceremony receives a standing ovation from the entire audience. Irene grows up and is a nurse in WW1. she asks her mother to make the war her own war and do something about it.

Marie approaches Lippmann for funds to device a mobile X-Ray unit that could determine if troops need amputation at the fronts, before their limbs are chopped off. Marie advises Irene to stay away from radiation as its effects are not fully understood yet. Lippmann again denies Marie, but this she threatens to go to the press and sell her pure gold Nobel medals to raise funds for her machines. She gets her funding.

Irene begins dating Frederic Joliot, and Marie initially disapproves of that relationship because of their joint research into induced radioactivity, later asking Irene not to take part in Frederic's future work on this because of possible effects on her health. Although Irene does not heed her mother, together they go to the Western Front together to run the X-ray machine. The machines work and start savings lives and limbs on the battlefield.

Scenes of Marie's life are interwoven with scenes depicting the future impact of her discoveries, including external beam radiotherapy at a hospital in Cleveland in 1956, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a nuclear bomb test in Nevada in 1961, and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. As she dies in 1934, she sees visions of these events before awakening in a hospital room. Pierre arrives and they leave the hospital together.

Before the film's credits, the Curies' accomplishments are detailed, including their mobile unit which provided X-Ray for more than a million men during the war "saving countless lives", their research would be used to create radiotherapy, and the Joliot-Curies would discover artificial or induced radioactivity in 1935. Irene went on to win the Nobel prize with her husband for discovery of artificial radioactivity. In France, to this day, radioactive treatment is called Curietherapie.

The movie's last image is of a photo showing Marie Curie's attendance at the 1927 Solvay Conference with many other celebrated physicists, including Albert Einstein.