marie curie

Marie Curie (born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland) was a pioneering physicist and chemist who conducted groundbreaking research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win Nobel Prizes twice, and the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields: Physics (1903, shared with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) and Chemistry (1911). She discovered the elements polonium (named after Poland) and radium, and developed techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes. Marie Curie was also the first female professor at the University of Paris. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units ("Little Curies") to help treat wounded soldiers by providing X-ray services near the front lines. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw, which remain major medical research centers. Curie died in 1934 from aplastic anemia caused likely by prolonged exposure to radiation during her research. Her work profoundly impacted science and medicine, and she remains a trailblazer for women in science.