25 June is reserved to Marie Curie

25 June is reserved to Marie Curie
On this day in 1903, Marie Curie defends her doctoral thesis on radioactive substances – at Université de la Sorbonne in Paris – becoming the first woman in France to receive a doctoral degree.

The examination committee expressed the opinion that Curie's findings, including the determination of Radium’s atomic weight, represented the greatest scientific contribution ever made in a doctoral thesis.

Of the committee’s three members, were two future Nobel Laureates - Gabriel Lippmann (Physics 1908) and Henri Moissan, (Chemistry 1906).

Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska (1867–1934), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) for pioneering research on radiation, and the Prize in Chemistry (1911) for the discovery of the elements radium and polonium.

Image:Thesis cover - Recherches sur les substances radioactives (Research on Radioactive Substances). 1903.
Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain

Bio:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html

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