Marie Curie

Marie Curie and Pierre Curie worked side by side in a converted shed in Paris to isolate polonium and radium from tonnes of pitchblende, and shared the 1903 Nobel prize in physics with Henri Becquerel. After Pierre's death in 1906 she took over his professorship and won the 1911 chemistry prize alone. Her partnership was the engine of the first discovery, and her later Radium Institute extended it to a team, including her daughter Irène.