Indefatigable despite a career of physically demanding and ultimately fatal work, she discovered polonium and radium, championed the use of radiation in medicine and fundamentally changed our understanding of radioactivity. Curie was born Marya Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw.

She was a scientist that discovered two elements, polonium and radium, she also invented techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes. She also discovered radiation that could kill human cells. During World War 1 she was sent to work with French builders and she helped design the x-ray.

Marie Curie was a physicist, chemist and a pioneer in the study of radiation. She and her husband, Pierre, discovered the elements polonium and radium. They and Henri Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, and Marie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

Here are 5 lessons you can learn from Marie Curie.

• Don’t let obstacles get in your way.
• Have an insatiable appetite for learning.
• Have passion for your work.
• Have determination to succeed.
• Inspire others.

The film’s flaw is Curie’s fear of hospitals. No matter how much time you invest in scouring the internet, there is no evidence to suggest that she had a debilitating phobia of hospitals.

Unfortunately, the Curies had no idea of the dangers inherent in exposure to radioactive elements. In fact, her husband carried a sample of radium in his pocket, so he could show people how it glowed and emitted heat.

Actually, she won two Nobel prizes: the first with Pierre, and the second on her own a decade later. But Madame Curie was more than just an eminent scientist. She was also a remarkable mother. This left Marie to raise the girls without a father.

She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis. A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw.

Marie Curie did not invent penicillin. Penicillin is the oldest known antibiotic. Its discovery in 1928, is credited to Alexander Fleming, a Scottish…

The Curies extracted uranium from ore and to their surprise, found that the leftover ore showed more activity than the pure uranium. They concluded that the ore contained other radioactive elements. This led to the discoveries of the elements polonium and radium.

A mass of X-ray diffraction images, extensive calculations, and astute analysis helped Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin to successfully determine the structure of penicillin in 1946 and, in 1956, also the structure of vitamin B12, which has the most complex structure of all vitamins.

Mapping the structure of penicillin in 1945 made the miracle drug far easier to manufacture. Vitamin B12, which Hodgkin mapped in 1954, is an essential weapon against pernicious anaemia. Her detailed map of insulin in 1969 allowed for vast improvements in the treatment of diabetes.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1964 was awarded to Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin “for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances.”

Dorothy Hodgkin was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving the atomic structure of molecules such as penicillin and insulin, using X-ray crystallography.

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In fact, the opposite became true. Two years later, Hodgkin was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. It took another seventeen years, and solving the structure of vitamin B 12, before she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964. For her colleague and friend Max Perutz this recognition was long overdue.

Dorothy Hodgkin, in full Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, née Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, (born May 12, 1910, Cairo, Egypt—died July 29, 1994, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, England), English chemist whose determination of the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12 brought her the 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Dorothy Hodgkin

Using X-ray crystallography, Hodgkin determined the structures of penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B12 and was the third woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.