Madam Curie

Marie Curie was a Polish physicist and chemist who lived between the years 1867-1934. Together with her husband, Pierre, she discovered two new elements (radium and polonium, two radioactive elements that they extracted chemically from pitchblende ore) and studied the x-rays they emitted. She found that the harmful properties of x-rays were able to kill tumours.

By the end of World War I, Marie Curie was probably the most famous woman in the world. She had made a conscious decision, however, not to patent methods of processing radium or its medical applications.  Her co-discovery with her husband Pierre Curie of the radioactive elements radium and polonium represents one of the best known stories in modern science for which they were recognised in 1901 with the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1911, Marie Curie was honoured with a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, to honour her for successfully isolating pure radium and determining radium's atomic weight.