8 Ground-Breaking Discoveries You Didn't Know Were Made By Women

3. Marie Curie: The Theory Of Radioactivity

Okay, maybe you have heard of this one, but we can't have a list without Marie. Although it seems like common knowledge now, Marie Curie's theories about radioactivity contradicted much of the received wisdom of her time. The word "atom" comes from the Greek for "indivisible", but Curie's observations led her to the conclusions that this wasn't quite the case. The discovery by Henri Becquerel that uranium emitted some kind of radiation that required no external energy input set Marie thinking. By examining the radioactive elements, she was able to deduce that the energy being emitted from them were originating from the atomic decay of the atom. She also discovered two new elements, polonium and radium. Marie Curie was awarded Nobel Prizes for her work, two of them in fact, and she is still the only person to hold two Nobel Prizes in different fields. Unfortunately, it was her work that would eventually kill her. She died from aplastic anemia, a bone marrow disease caused by her habit of carrying radioactive material in her pockets in the lab (the dangers were not yet known at that point).