Marie Curie can rightly be regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time. The only PERSON to win Nobel prizes in two scientific disciplines.
She discovered radioactive elements and pioneered the use of X-rays for medical diagnosis. A passionate fighter for Polish nationalism.

Rosalind Franklin took the crucial X-ray diffraction photograph that enabled Watson and Crick to work out DNA's double-helix structure.

Dorothy Hodgkin was probably the world's best X-ray crystallographer. Yet she died, aged 37, of unrecognised cancer of the uterus, probably brought on by her exposure to radiation. She determined the structures of vitamin B and insulin and remains the only British woman to have won the Nobel Prize.

Lyn Margulis revolutionised our understanding of the origins of the mini organs in cells.  But it took her 12 years for her ideas to be accepted.

Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring fired the starting gun for the environmental movement.