Marie Curie received her first Nobel Prize in Physics.
The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel for their research into the radiation phenomena first identified by Becquerel. Marie Curie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize.
The award recognized the Curies’ investigation of radioactivity, a term Marie helped establish. Using sensitive electrical measurements and painstaking chemical work, they studied uranium minerals and identified evidence for previously unknown elements. Their work eventually led to the discovery of polonium and radium.
People sometimes remember Curie primarily for chemistry because she won a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. That later award honored her discovery of polonium and radium, the isolation of radium, and her study of its compounds. Thus, Physics was her first Nobel category, while Chemistry was her second—and she remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two scientific fields.