Transcript: Working early in the twentieth century physicist Marie Curie was able to show that radioactive processes released millions of times more energy per atom than any chemical process known. Marie Curie was a pioneer. With her husband she was the first to isolate a radioactive element. She was the first female professor in the six hundred year history of the Sorbonne. She was the first person ever to win two Nobel Prizes; however Marie and many others who worked on radioactivity paid heavily for being pioneers. Unaware of the damaging effects of radiation on human skin and tissue they died from radioactive poisoning.