"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."
Polish physicist and chemist, Marie Curie was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the
only person honored with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and the first female
professor at the University of Paris. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and
Warsaw. Her husband Pierre Curie was also a Nobel laureate, as were her daughter
Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie. Her achievements include the
creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her), techniques for isolating
radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium. It
was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into
the treatment of neoplasms ("cancers"), using radioactive isotopes. While an actively
loyal French citizen, she never lost her sense of Polish identity. She named the first new
chemical element that she discovered (1898) "polonium" for her native country, and in
1932 she founded a Radium Institute in her hometown Warsaw, headed by her
physician-sister Bronis?awa.