MARIE CURIE -- TWICE HONORED NOBEL LAUREATE

MARIE CURIE, born as Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867 was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, French citizenship.
She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the first twice-honored Nobel Laureate and still the only one in two different sciences, and the first female professor at the University of Paris.
While an actively loyal French citizen, she never lost her sense of Polish identity. Madame Curie named the first new chemical element that she discovered Polonium for her native country.
From childhood she showed an exceptional memory and work ethic, and was known to neglect food and sleep in order to study.
At age 16, she graduated from a Russian Liceum at the top of her class, winning a gold medal on completion of her secondary education there.
At the University of Paris, she studied mathematics, physics and chemistry. Later, in 1909, she would become that University’s first female professor, when she was named to her late husband’s chair in physics, which he had held for only a year and half before his tragic death.In 1903, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.
Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize.
Eight years later, she received the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements of radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds o this remarkable element”.
Sklodowska-Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes.
Hear death in 1934 was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly due to exposure to radiation, as the damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not yet known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed with no safety measures.
She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pockets and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light the substances gave off in the dark.