Gender

Pakistani flag, for article on honour killing law Pakistan

Pakistan passes criminal law to prosecute honour killings

Pakistan’s honour killing law, passed in October 2016, closed a devastating loophole that had let families “forgive” relatives who killed their own — almost always women — and walk free. The mandatory 25-year sentence arrived months after the murder of social media star Qandeel Baloch galvanized public outrage. It marked a quiet but meaningful shift: the state, not the family, now decides.

Marie Curie in the laboratory, for article on radioactivity research

Marie Curie becomes first woman to win Nobel Prize for radioactivity research

Marie Curie made history in December 1903, becoming the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize for her work on radioactivity. Working from a leaking Paris shed, she and Pierre isolated two new elements from tons of pitchblende ore, naming one polonium after her partitioned homeland. Her insight that radiation came from atoms themselves reshaped modern physics.