Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the only person to win the award in two different fields – physics and chemistry. Marie curie is remembered for her discovery of Radium and Polonium, and her huge contribution to the fight against cancer.
She was born in Warsaw in Poland on 7th November 1867. Marie married French physicist Pierre Curie on 26th July 1895.
During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals. Later, Marie and her husband Pierre decided to hunt for the new element they suspected might be present in pitchblende.
By the end of 1898 they announced the discovery of two new chemical elements. The first element they discovered was Polonium, named by Marie to honour her homeland. The second element the couple discovered was Radium, which they named after the Latin word for ray.
She shared the Nobel Prize with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, the original discoverer of radioactivity.
Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, of aplastic anaemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research.
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