Marie Skłodowska Curie has been voted the most significant woman in world history in a poll conducted by BBC History magazine. She was nominated by Patricia Fara, President of the British Society for the History of Science.
The magazine compiled a shortlist of ‘100 women who changed the world’, chosen by 10 experts, and asked its readers to help rank the nominees.
The Polish-born chemist Skłodowska Curie (1867-1934) pioneered radiation research. Fara describes how she “boasts an extraordinary array of achievements. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, first female professor at the University of Paris, and the first person – note the use of person there, not woman – to win a second Nobel Prize”.
“The odds were always stacked against her,” adds Fara. “In Poland her patriotic family suffered under a Russian regime. In France she was regarded with suspicion as a foreigner – and of course, wherever she went, she was discriminated against as a woman.”
Skłodowska Curie was followed by Rosa Parks, Emmeline Pankhurst, Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin.