This month marks the 150th birthday of the world’s most famous female scientist! Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, the breakdown of certain types of atoms. Curie became a professor, a Nobel Prize winner, and a leader in her field at a time when women couldn’t attend most universities.
Curie also worked to incorporate her research, like radiation therapy and X-rays, into medicine. Her lab, created in 1909 in Paris, France, became one of the world’s leading cancer research centers. It is now named the Curie Institute in her honor.