Marie Skłodowska Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. The photo was taken in 1912. #InternationalWomensDay

She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

She is the only woman in this photograph taken during the 5th Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics, 1927. 17 of the 29 attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners.

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Despite Curie's fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia. During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right-wing press as a foreigner and atheist.

Her daughter later remarked on the French press' hypocrisy in portraying Curie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated for a French honor, but portraying her as a French heroine when she received foreign honors such as her Nobel Prizes.

Promptly after World War I started, she attempted to donate her gold Nobel Prize medals to the war effort but the French National Bank refused to accept them. She did buy war bonds, using her Nobel Prize money.

She said: "I am going to give up the little gold I possess. I shall add to this the scientific medals, which are quite useless to me."

"I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory."