This iconic photo has gone viral. Women's history month is a good time to acknowledge that Marie Curie is the only woman in this picture of 29 geniuses.
In 1927, 29 scientists, including Marie Curie, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and Planck attended the Fifth Solvay Institut International de Physique in Brussels to discuss the newly formed quantum theory. Seventeen of them were already, or went on to become, Nobel Prize winners.
Significantly, Curie, the only woman among the 29 geniuses, was also the only one to win not one but two Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields – Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911.
According to a Business Insider report, this is how the scientists are placed:
Back row L-R: A Piccard, E Henriot, P Ehrenfest, Ed Herzen, Th. De Donder, E Schroedinger, E Verschaffelt, W Pauli, W Heisenberg, RH Fowler, L Brillouin
Middle row L-R: P Debye, M Knudsen, WL Bragg, HA Kramers. PA M Dirac, AH Compton, LV De Broglie, M Born, N Bohr
Front row: L-R: Angmeir, M Planck, M Curie, HA Lorentz, A Einstein, P Langevin, Ch E Guye, CTR Wilson, OW Richardson
While the photo has been around for a while, it resurfaced this International Women's Day. Twitter had some interesting reactions:
Marie Curie was the first woman ever to win the Nobel Prize and the first scientist to win two. In a world and time where men were predominant in every field, Curie proved that a woman is no less.
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