Marie Curie

Marie Curie (born Manya Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867, was a pioneer in radioactivity research and the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She died of leukaemia on July 4, 1934.

She studied mathematics, chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1891, becoming the first woman to teach there. Whilst teaching there she met Pierre Curie, a physics teacher at the University of Paris. Marrying soon after, they began joint research on radioactive substances. In 1903, Marie and Pierre jointly won the Nobel Prize for discovering radium and polonium, with Antoine Henri Bacquerel who had independently discovered natural radioactivity.

When Pierre died in 1906, devoted herself to continuing the work that they had begun together. She received a second Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911.

Irene Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie & Pierre Curie, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, jointly with her husband.

• BBC History Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)
• Nobel Lecture December 11, 1911 "Radium and the New Concepts in Chemistry"
• 1903 Nobel prize in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.
• Irene Joliot-Curie Nobel prize in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements.