Title: Marguerite Perey

Marguerite Perey was a French physicist known as "the other daughter of Madamme Curie". She wanted to be a doctor but, after his father's early death, she had no resources. With great effort, and opposition from her mother, she managed to obtain a degree in chemical laboratory technique and a 3-month contract of practices at the Radium Institute with Marie Curie.

Marie Curie detected Marguerite's intellectual ability and her ability to work in the laboratory, and she decided Marguerite was her laboratory assistant, training her despite not having any university studies. They were together for five years, until Marie Curie's death.

Through radioactivity experiments, when she was 30 years old, she discovered the francium (Fr), the second least abundant element on Earth and with a half-life less than half an hour. She did not even have high school studies!

Her chiefs freed her from laboratory tasks and earned her a scholarship to the Sorbonne. She made a preparatory and higher modules in graduate mode. She was then able to defend the PhD.

Marie Curie would have been very proud of her when in 1962 she was the first female member of the Paris Academy of Sciences.