Far more than any woman scientist before her, and more than any woman scientist for decades afterwards, Marie Curie was part of the mainstream of science. She obtained a thorough scientific education from some of the leading physicists and mathematicians in Paris, and carried out on her own, and with her husband, Pierre Curie, pioneering research in radioactivity, a term that she coined. The Curies discovered and investigated properties of two new radioactive elements, polonium and radium, and laid the basis for a new science of radioactivity, as well as of a new medical treatment.

Marie Curie's work formed part of the succession of major discoveries that transformed nineteenth-century classical physics into twentieth-century atomic and nuclear physics. For her achievements, she was awarded two Nobel prizes, one in physics in 1903 and another chemistry in 1911. She became the first woman to hold a chair at the University of Paris, and to have charge of a major laboratory where students carried out doctoral research and visiting scientists received fellowships.

Despite strong prejudices against women in science, she succeeded in her extraordinary scientific career through her brilliant mind, her excellent training and scientific connections, her perseverance, her managerial skills, and the timing of events in her life. Although personally shy and reticent, Marie Curie became, and is likely to remain, the most celebrated woman scientist in history.