Marie Sklodowska Curie

Curie, Marie Sklodowska (1867–1934), Polish-born French physicist and two-time winner of the Nobel Prize (in physics, 1903, and chemistry, 1911). An early investigator of radioactive elements, including uranium, Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered the elements polonium and radium in 1898, also determining their atomic weights. The Curies shared the 1903 prize with Antoine Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. In 1911 Marie Curie became the first person to win a second Nobel Prize, for her study of the chemical properties of radium. She died of leukemia, probably radiation-related.

See also: Radioactivity.