"The object of the present work is the publication of researches which I have been carrying on for more than four years on radio-active bodies. I began these researches by a study of the phosphorescence of uranium, discovered by M. Becquerel. The results to which I was led by this work promised to afford so interesting a field that Pierre Curie put aside the work on which he was engaged, and joined me, our object being the extraction of new radio-active substances and the further study of their properties."

Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867 – 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, is the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and is the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields.