1. She was born in Warsaw, Poland and named Maria Sklodowska. She changed her first name to Marie after moving to France in 1891.
2. In 1903 she shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Henri Becquerel and her husband Pierre Curie for their work on radioactivity.
3. Originally her name was left off the winners’ list but Pierre insisted she be included. She thus became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
4. In 1911 she was awarded the prize for Chemistry and became the first person to win two Nobels.
5. Her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, jointly with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
6. Marie and Irene are the only mother-daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes.
7. Pierre Curie died in a road accident in 1906 when he was knocked down by a horse and carriage.
8. As well as radium, Marie and Pierre discovered polonium, naming it after her home country.
9. She died on US Independence Day, July 4, 1934, probably of the effects of over-exposure to radium.
10. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” (Marie Curie).