Who was the world’s most famous female scientist?

Answer: Famed scientist Marie Curie was a Polish born, French naturalized, physicist and chemist, and a pioneer in the study of radioactivity.

In 1898 she and her husband, Pierre, discovered the elements polonium and radium – the former named after Curie’s native land.

In 1903 Curie became the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate in physics. In the same year she and her husband were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

In 1906, she became the first woman to teach at the famed Sorbonne. Curie received another Nobel Prize, for chemistry, in 1911. Thus becoming one of only four people to win the Nobel prize twice.

On the outbreak of World War One in 1914, Curie set aside her research and organized a fleet of portable X-ray machines for doctors at the front.

Nobel prize winning ran in the family. Her daughter Irene won it in 1935, with her husband. In 1965, Curie’s son-in-law accepted a Nobel Prize on behalf of UNICEF.

Years of exposure to radioactive materials led to her death in 1934 from leukemia, caused by the action of radiation.

Curie said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” Also, “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

Source: Obsessive Genius by Barbara Goldsmith

More at: History

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