#OnThisDay 25 June in 1903, Marie Curie defends her doctoral thesis on radioactive substances – at Université de la Sorbonne in Paris – becoming the first woman in France to receive a doctoral degree.
The examination committee expressed the opinion that Curie's findings, including the determination of Radium’s atomic weight, represented the greatest scientific contribution ever made in a doctoral thesis.
Of the committee’s three members, were two future Nobel Laureates Gabriel Lippmann (Physics 1908) and Henri Moissan, (Chemistry 1906).
Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska (1867–1934), was awarded the #NobelPrize in Physics (1903) for pioneering research on radiation, and the Prize in Chemistry (1911) for the discovery of the elements radium and polonium.
Thesis cover: Recherches sur les substances radioactives (Research on Radioactive Substances). 1903. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.