Marie Curie lauded as woman with biggest impact on history

MARIE CURIE has had the most significant impact on world history, according to a BBC poll of women who changed the world.

The pioneering scientist was voted higher than Baroness Thatcher, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Virgin Mary in BBC History Magazine.

The Polish-born French scientist, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, studied radioactivity, a term she coined. Her discoveries launched effective treatments for cancer and helped in the development of X-rays in surgery.

Patricia Fara, president of the British Society for the History of Science, who nominated Curie for the poll, said: “She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, 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 (chemistry). The odds were always stacked against her. 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.”

In second place was Rosa Parks, the US civil rights activist, with British suffragette leader Pankhurst third. Ada Lovelace, a computer programmer and mathematician, and Rosalind Franklin, a crystallographer, were fourth and fifth. Lady Thatcher came sixth, with Diana, Princess of Wales, 15th. Others in the top 20 were authors Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, Queen Victoria and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Charlotte Hodgman, the magazine’s deputy editor, said: “The poll has shone a light on some extraordinary women, many of whose achievements and talents were overlooked in their own lifetimes. And it is refreshing to see unfamiliar names make the top 20, such as 19th-century philanthropist Angela Burdett-coutts. I’m sure the full list will provoke conversation and debate.”