<P> Marie Skłodowska - Curie was a Polish - born French physicist and chemist who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity . She and her husband are considered to have laid the cornerstone of the nuclear age with their research on radioactivity . Marie was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel , a French physicist who discovered in 1896 that uranium casts off rays similar to the X-rays discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen . Marie Curie began studying uranium in late 1897 and theorized , according to a 1904 article she wrote for Century magazine , `` that the emission of rays by the compounds of uranium is a property of the metal itself -- that it is an atomic property of the element uranium independent of its chemical or physical state . '' Curie took Becquerel 's work a few steps further , conducting her own experiments on uranium rays . She discovered that the rays remained constant , no matter the condition or form of the uranium . The rays , she theorized , came from the element 's atomic structure . This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and the Curies coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena . </P>
<P> Marie Skłodowska - Curie was a Polish - born French physicist and chemist who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity . She and her husband are considered to have laid the cornerstone of the nuclear age with their research on radioactivity . Marie was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel , a French physicist who discovered in 1896 that uranium casts off rays similar to the X-rays discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen . Marie Curie began studying uranium in late 1897 and theorized , according to a 1904 article she wrote for Century magazine , `` that the emission of rays by the compounds of uranium is a property of the metal itself -- that it is an atomic property of the element uranium independent of its chemical or physical state . '' Curie took Becquerel 's work a few steps further , conducting her own experiments on uranium rays . She discovered that the rays remained constant , no matter the condition or form of the uranium . The rays , she theorized , came from the element 's atomic structure . This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and the Curies coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena . </P>
who are the scientists credited with introducing the phenomena known as radioactivity
who are the scientists credited with introducing the phenomena known as radioactivity
Marie Skłodowska - Curie
Marie Skłodowska - Curie