This is one title in a series of short, illustrated biographies. They tell the stories of those who have shaped our present and our past, from Beethoven to Dietrich, from Einstein to Churchill and are suitable for students and the general reader. Marie Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, going on to win another. For many years the scientific establishment in Paris neglected her work, but in 1903, with her husband Pierre and Henri Bequerel, she won the Nobel Prize for Physics in their pioneering work in the field of radioactivity. Eight years later she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her discovery of Radium and Polonium. Sarah Dry offers a picture of a more dynamic and politically engaged Curie than the isolated genius of popular memory. The book also includes an essay by Sabine Seifert on the life of Curie's little-recognized daughter and co-worker, Irene Loliet-Cure, who was herself awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1936.

Author Biography

Sarah Dry won the Rona Jaffe prize for creative non-fiction at Harvard University and went on to study at the London Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and to do post-graduate research at the University of Cambridge.