This photo shows Marie and Irène Curie:
* 2/5 of all women to ever win the Nobel prize in chemistry
* 1/3 in physics
* 1/4 of all 2x Nobel prize winners
* 1/7 of parent-child Nobellists
* 2 x badasses whose work has saved millions of lives

Seeing as most people will have heard of Marie, I'm going to add a little bit of info here about Irène, who won the chemistry Nobel with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie in 1934. (The couple used both surnames.)

What did they do? They learned you could TURN THINGS RADIOACTIVE.

Induced radioactivity - bombarding something with radiation and making it continue to be radioactive - was incredibly important. It led Fermi to start his experiments that would result in *his* Nobel prize, and later the development of nuclear power. (1st nuclear reactor below)

We're not done there. It was also the breakthrough that would lead to nuclear fission - something Fermi discovered but didn't realize. This would lead to Otto Hahn's Nobel prize (even though Lise Meitner, who was snubbed, did the real heavy lifting.)

The Joliot-Curies were almost recognised with element 102, as the USSR team (later confirmed as the 1st discoverers) wanted to call it joliotium.

But it always irks me how forgotten Irène is. Her work led to cancer treatments that have saved millions.

Sorry - Nobel was 1935. The discovery of artificial radioactivity was made in 1934. My bad.

1934 prize was to Harold Urey, who was also pretty amazing.