[Physics] Work of Marie Curie

Question

I've been reading about the work of Marie Curie recently after a friend filled me in on what she did (never having had much of an idea previously) and it's all very interesting.

What I can't understand however is what real impact her discovery of radium had for the development of physics in general? I mean in the textbooks and websites I've been browsing, Curie is made out to be some sort of physics pioneer – but I can't see where her discoveries specifically moved the study of physics forward (don't get me wrong, I'm sure she was extremely influential, I'm just trying to understand why).

How did the discovery of radium/radioactivity impact the study of physics? What impact did Marie Curie have in actually moving towards modern physics? I can only seem to find a variety of claims that she did impact physics, rather than how specifically – it all seems a bit odd.

Answer 1

Her achievements include a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined[2]), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes: the Curie Institute (Paris) and the Curie Institute (Warsaw).

her husband and his brother had invented the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical charge. Using the Curie electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity.[16] Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present. She had shown that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself. In scientific terms, this was the most important single piece of work that she conducted.[17]

--copied from wikipedia

I guess fills some of the void