360Marie Curie
In 60 words
Marie Curie was a Polish-born French scientist who pioneered the study of radioactivity, a word she coined. With her husband Pierre, she discovered polonium and radium in 1898. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in 1903, and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry.
Born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, she moved to Paris in 1891 to study at the Sorbonne, where she met Pierre Curie. Women could not attend university in Poland at the time.
During the First World War she developed mobile X-ray units, called 'little Curies', to help treat wounded soldiers. She died in 1934 of an illness linked to radiation exposure. Her daughter Irène also won a Nobel Prize.