Scientific Paris

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize — in Physics, in 1903, for the discovery of radioactivity. Eight years later she won a second one, in Chemistry. She remains the only person in history to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. She did this in a country that wouldn't let women vote, in a lab that was essentially a leaky shed, working with materials that were slowly killing her.

Her husband Pierre was her scientific equal and partner until a horse cart killed him in 1906. Her daughter Irène won her own Nobel in Chemistry. Her other daughter Ève became a writer and wrote the biography. Paul Langevin — a brilliant physicist and Marie's close friend — caused a national scandal when their relationship became public. The science and the human drama were inseparable here.