Who is your favorite historical figure?

Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Wikipedia

I had to look up some of her details as I could not remember the spelling of her maiden name. She won the Nobel prizes for Chemistry and Physics. She found both Radium and Polonium within tons of a mineral called Pitchblende. She slowly dissolved and precipitated the mineral so that the Radium and Polonium was washed out. She and her husband Pierre Curie worked in an old shed attached to the Paris University to do the work.

It took her a long time to be accepted on her University course because she was a woman. And after her husband died after being run over by a horse drawn omnibus she continued to work on the discoveries of radiation. She worked with Ernest Rutherford who had discovered Gamma rays when he found photographic plates had been fogged despite not being exposed to light. Curie managed to concentrate Radium which was used to paint onto watch dials and hands. The paintresses who used the luminous paint used to point their brushes with their lips and many of them got cancer in their mouth and Jaws because the damaging effects of radiation were not understood.

Marie Curie had daughters who ran an Xray ambulance in the first world war, I can’t remember if Marie Curie was involved with that.

I’m sorry I don’t know all the details, but she was certainly a strong roll model for female scientists and helped grow a whole new branch of Chemistry and Physics.