Curie’s parents were Polish, and they were both teachers; their employment was precarious. Curie’s father moved from job to job, and the family to smaller and smaller apartments. When she was 11, Curie’s mother died of tuberculosis and her oldest sister of typhus.

Then Curie discovered an even more radioactive element, radium, and, through observation of radium, made a fundamental discovery: Radiation wasn’t dependent on the organisation of atoms at the molecular level; something was happening inside the atom itself. The atom was not, as scientists believed at the time, inert, indivisible, or even solid.

In 1911, for the isolation of radium, she was awarded another Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was and still is the only person to be awarded Nobel Prizes in two scientific categories. By that time, Curie was world-famous, and the director of the Curie Laboratory at the newly established Radium Institute (today the Curie Institute).

Curie believed scientific research was a public good and championed its utility. She and her husband had discovered that radium destroyed diseased cells faster than healthy cells, and thus that radiation could be used to treat tumours.