Marie Curie was one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. She was a Polish-born French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different sciences. Marie Curie was one of the Curies, a family of scientists that included her husband Pierre Curie and her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie.