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Marie Curie

portrait of Marie Curie

Photo: Henri Manuel, Public domain — Source

Physics Europe 19th-20th

Polish-born physicist and chemist who became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences — Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911). Her pioneering research on radioactivity, a term she coined, led to the discovery of polonium and radium. She developed mobile X-ray units during World War I and founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw. Her work laid the groundwork for nuclear physics and cancer treatment, though prolonged radiation exposure ultimately caused her death.

Source: Nobel Prize