Marie Curie

Marie Curie (born Manya Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland) in 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.