20 Women Who Made History By Bending Gender Roles

Marie Curie’s accomplishments rattle off a long list. The first woman in Europe to earn a PhD and the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (which she did twice, in Physics and Chemistry), Curie was also the first female professor at the prestigious University of Paris. Polish by birth, Marie Sklodowska Curie developed a theory of a radioactivity (a term she coined) and found the elements radium and polonium (which she named after her native Poland).