Marie Curie

Born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw, she came to Paris to study because Polish universities would not admit women. With her husband Pierre she discovered polonium and radium, and she remains the only person to win Nobel prizes in two different sciences.

She died of aplastic anaemia caused by decades of exposure to radiation. In 1995 she became the first woman moved to the Panthéon on her own merits; her notebooks are still radioactive and are kept in lead-lined boxes.