Marie Curie

She was admired by her contemporaries and is alone in receiving the Nobel Prize in both physics and chemistry. Thanks to her research on radioactivity, knowledge about the inner structure of the atoms increased. Her research also contributed to the use of ionizing radiation in chemistry, biology and medicine as well as the discovery of the elements radium and polonium.

After schooling in Warsaw, Curie enrolled at Sorbonne University in 1891. This is also where she got to know her future husband Pierre Curie. In 1897 she began to study the "uranium radiation" discovered the year before by Henri Becquerel.

In 1903, together with Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. In 1911 she received another Nobel Prize. This time in chemistry for her research on the radioactive elements.

She died in 1934 in aplastic anemia, probably caused by the radiation she had been exposed to in her work.

Reference: Wikipedia

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