Marie Curie

Working with her husband, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium in 1898. In 1903 they won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering radioactivity. In 1911 she won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for isolating pure radium. Following work on X-rays during World War I, she studied radioactive substances and their medical applications.

With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields.

Marie Curie’s contributions to physics were immense, not only in her own work, as indicated by her two Nobel Prizes, but also through her influence on subsequent generations of nuclear physicists and chemists. Her work paved the way for the discovery of the neutron and artificial radioactivity.