radiation came from atoms. It was an enormous breakthrough, and she was still just a
student.
In the years to come, she and her husband made more discoveries - including the
important fact that uranium is not the only radioactive mineral. In fact, Marie Curie
discovered a previously unknown mineral that she named “polonium” in honor of her
native Poland.
Although women were not taken seriously in the world of science in the late 1800s, no
one could ignore the important discoveries that Marie Curie was making. She and her
husband shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, making her the first woman to ever
receive this prestigious award. Then, in 1911, she won her second Nobel Prize, this one
for Chemistry.
Marie Curie became the most famous woman scientist of all time, but all of those years
working with radiation took their toll. She died of anemia brought on by radiation
poisoning when she was sixty-six.
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