Marie CURIE was a Polish-born French physicist and chemist who is credited with the discovery of radium in 1898. She and her husband Pierre CURIE conducted research on radioactivity, which led to the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. Marie CURIE was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics and the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris. Her work on radioactivity has had a lasting impact on science and medicine.