Polish physicist and chemist Madame Marie Curie, right, works in a laboratory, with her daughter Irene, in Paris France, April 20, 1927. Curie, along with her husband, Pierre, first isolated the two highly radioactive elements, radium and plutonium, from uranium ore 25 years before. (AP Photo)
Women’s History Month Quote of the Day: Marie Curie
“We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.”
Marie Curie was an educator, physicist, and chemist most famous for her discovery of radium and polonium and the isolation of radium, which led to major developments in treatments for cancer. Curie had a hunger for knowledge from an early age, specifically in the sciences and mathematics. She took her expertise to Paris, where she met her husband, with who Curie shared her first Nobel Prize. Curie is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to have two, and the only person to have a Nobel Prize in two different science fields.