Marie Curie: Build a Better World By Building Better Individuals

Marie Curie (1867-1934) was a renowned physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Additionally, Curie was the first person (and only woman) to win twice, and the only person to win twice in multiple sciences (physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911). Curie was the discoverer of the elements polonium and radium. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris. Curie is, as of the present, the only woman to be entombed in the French Panthéon on her own merits.

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

Source: Pierre Curie (1923), as translated by Charlotte Kellogg and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, p. 168 [Wikiquote]