Marie Curie (1867-1934): Polish-French physicist and chemist
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
—Marie Curie
- A pioneer in the research on radioactivity
- Created the field of atomic physics
- Discovered two previously unknown elements, polonium and radium
- The first woman to win a Nobel Prize (for physics in 1903)
- The first person and only woman to win twice (for chemistry in 1991)
- The only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences
- The Curie family legacy has won five Nobel Prizes: her husband shared the 1903 Physics Prize and her daughter received the Chemistry Prize in 1935 with her husband.
- The first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris
- In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed in the Panthéon in Paris