Marie Curie

Marie Curie (1867-1934) is probably one of the most famous scientists, and famous women, in history. She paved the way for both physicists and women as a Nobel Prize winner and teacher. She joined the science faculty at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1906, taking over as a Physics professor after the death of her husband. She is credited with the discovery of radium, as well as work on polonium, the separation of radioactive isotopes, and mobile X-ray units for the front during World War I. The Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris was opened in 1914, which is now the Curie Foundation's Curie Institute and Museum, dedicated to cancer research. She also inaugurated the Radium Institute in Warsaw, Poland in the 1930s, which continues as a cancer research center today.

Image: Madame Curie in her lab, France, from the National Archives of the Hague

First woman to win the Nobel Prize

Marie Curie's "Firsts"

• First woman in Europe to receive a doctorate of science
• First female lecturer, laboratory director, and department head at the Sorbonne
• First scientist to use the term "radioactivity"
• First woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics
• First scientist to win two Nobel Prizes
• First Noble Prize winner to be a mother to another Nobel Prize winner
• First woman laid to rest under the Pantheon in Paris based on her own accomplishments