Marie Curie (1867-1934, nee Marya Sklodowska), Polish-French physicist. With her husband Pierre, she isolated the radioactive elements polonium and radium in 1898. Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for this work. She had previously been awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics (with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) for her work on radioactivity. She held the chair of physics at the Sevres Higher Normal School for Girls, working there from 1900-6. Following the death of Pierre in 1906, she became assistant professor at the Sorbonne, Paris, and then full professor in 1908. Photograph by Eugene Pirou, Parisian photographer who was active at the end of the 19th century.