The Polish-born physicist and chemist who, with Pierre Curie, isolated polonium and radium, named the phenomenon of radioactivity, and demonstrated that it was an atomic property rather than a chemical reaction — twice awarded the Nobel Prize (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911), the only person to win in two different sciences, while facing systematic exclusion from French scientific institutions and the gendered mythology that has obscured the rigor and ambition of her work.
In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie processed tons of pitchblende residue — the waste left from uranium ore — to extract a fraction of a gram of radium chloride. The work was done in a leaking shed. Marie did much of the chemical separation herself, stirring boiling ore residues with an iron rod for hours at a stretch. The luminous glow of the radium in its dishes was something she found beautiful. She did not know it was slowly killing her.