Portal:Chemistry/Selected biography/9

Marie Curie (1867-1934) was a Polish physicist and chemist, and a leading figure in the early science of radioactivity. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the elements radium and polonium. She received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, thus becoming the first woman to earn a Nobel – 8 years later, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, thus becoming the first person to receive 2 Nobel Prizes, and the first to do so in two different fields. The only other scientist to have achieved this feat is Linus Pauling. Her death was from aplastic anemia, widely believed to be due to her massive exposure to radiation.