In 1867 Alfred Nobel patented dynamite and used his wealth to create the annual Nobel prize fund.  That same year, Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and she later became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Because women could not attend the University of Warsaw, she attended classes in a secret Warsaw "floating university". Later she enrolled in science at the Sorbonne in Paris. There physicist Pierre Curie offered her a job in his small lab, and they eventually married. 

Henri Becquerel's discovery that some minerals emitted spontaneous radiation led Marie to experiment with radioactive pitchblende. The Curies discovered a new element, radioactive polonium, and Marie also isolated radium.  They won the Nobel Prize for their research in radioactivity, and Marie later won a second Nobel Prize for the discovery of polonium and radium.  Marie's years of exposure to radiation led to her death of cancer in 1934.