By the Numbers: Marie Curie

November 13, 2017

By Harrison Tasoff

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.