Episode Details

Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 — the only person in history to win the award in two different scientific disciplines. She discovered polonium and radium, pioneered the study of radioactivity, and drove mobile X-ray units to the front lines of World War I. The radiation that made her discoveries possible also killed her, and her notebooks remain too radioactive to handle without protective equipment over ninety years after her death.

This episode focuses on the unprecedented double Nobel and what it reveals about Curie's range, examining how a single scientist could transform both physics and chemistry while the establishment tried to deny her credit at every turn.

• The first Nobel in Physics — shared with Pierre and Becquerel, and the fight to include her
• The second Nobel in Chemistry — won solo, during a press scandal designed to destroy her
• Why no one else has matched the feat of winning in two different sciences
• The wartime X-ray units, the radiation poisoning, and the radioactive legacy that endures