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The ashes of Marie Curie and her husband Pierre have now been laid to rest under the famous dome of the Panthéon, in Paris. Through her discovery of radium, Marie Curie paved the way for nuclear physics and cancer therapy. Born of polish parents, she was a woman of science and courage, compassionate yet stubbornly determined. Her research work was to cost her her life. Marie Curie, or rather Marya Sklodowska, was …

…eacute;ric Joliot, Irène, who had been working in the same laboratory and with the same relentless determination as her mother, discovered artificial radioactivity, for which she, too, was awarded the Nobel Prize. Radioactivity is the starting point for cancer treatment, for the dating techniques used on ancient objects, rocks and the universe, and for molecular biology and modern genetics; it is also the source of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb.