Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

popular name: Marie Curie

date_of_death: July 4, 1934

age: 66

cause_of_death: Aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation

claim_to_fame: Science

best_know_for: Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris in 1906, and the first of only five women to be buried in Le Panthéon. Working with her husband, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium in 1898. In 1903 they won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering radioactivity. In 1911 she won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for isolating pure radium. Following work on X-rays during World War I, she studied radioactive substances and their medical applications.

popular name: Eugene Wigner

date_of_death: January 1, 1995

age: 92

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Science

best_know_for: Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner was a Hungarian theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He obtained American citizenship in 1937, and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles". Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into physics, particularly the theory of symmetry in physics. Along the way he performed ground-breaking work in pure mathematics, in which he authored a number of mathematical theorems. In particular, Wigner's theorem is a cornerstone in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.

popular name: Ludwig Boltzmann

date_of_death: September 5, 1906

age: 62

cause_of_death: Suicide - hanging

claim_to_fame: Science

best_know_for: Ludwig Boltzmann was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time. His fame is due to his pioneering research work on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (his basic equation of kinetic gas theory and the second principle of thermodynamics) as well as the atomic hypothesis of matter. He also made important contributions in mechanics, electromagnetism, mathematics and philosophy. Boltzmann was an extraordinary mathematician, a philosopher, a great teacher (he had an outstanding memory), he was a brilliant conversationalist as well as an excellent pianist with a great passion for Beethoven. And yet he was a controversial figure and his innovative ideas (on atomism and irreversibility in particular) were often misunderstood and ostracized. In particular, his love of extreme mathematics earned him the by-name of "algebraic terrorist". Only a few years after his suicide that Jean Baptiste Perrin’s experimental verification of Brownian motion would settle the century-long debate about the atomic theory and thereby validate Boltzmann’s career.