If you don’t know who Marie Curie was, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog in the first place. I’ll assume you’re all at least passingly familiar with this historic figure.

What you may not be aware of is exactly how epically awesome Marie Curie really was. This is a woman who, at the turn of the 19th century, when feminism was pretty much non-existent and most women around the world did not even have the right to vote, managed to become a widely renowned and respected scientist.

Science, in those days, was considered a strictly male endeavour, and I can only imagine the depths of bigotry and sexism Marie Curie had to overcome in her voyage to become a scientist that was taken seriously.

Then, in 1903, she wins a Nobel prize, the first woman to do so. Her role in the discovery of radioactivity earns her the Nobel Prize for Physics. Remember, this is at the start of the 20th century, when women were on the whole not taken particularly serious as scientists.

But it gets better. In 1911, she wins a second Nobel Prize. This time it’s the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, which she received for her discovery of the radium element. That made her the first person – not just the first woman, but the first person in the history of mankind – to have won two Nobel prizes in different disciplines. Only one other person has since matched that feat.

Marie Curie died in 1934 from the effects of radioactive poisoning. She literally gave her life in service of her craft. When her remains were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris in 1995, she became the first – and so far only – woman to be entombed in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Regardless of her gender, Marie Curie was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. And when you do take her gender in to account, the fact that she was such a great scientist in a day and age when sexism was the norm, we can only conclude that she was without doubt one of the greatest human beings to have ever lived.

Marie Curie was truly, epically, awesome.