Marie Skłodowska Curie -- the first woman Nobel Laureate and first person to win twice

PARIS: Marie Skłodowska Curie, a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Curie, who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, was also the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences.

She is still the only person to receive the prize in two different scientific fields.

Marie Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Curies was paid rich tribute on International Women Day here Friday March 08.

According to Wikipedia, she was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw.

In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work.