Marie Curie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in which field?

Marie Curie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Nobel committee recognised her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, her isolation of radium, and her investigations into radium’s properties and compounds.

This was Curie’s second Nobel Prize. In 1903, she had shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for research into radioactivity. Winning in two different scientific fields made her the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes and remains one of the most distinctive achievements in Nobel history.

The 1911 award is sometimes confused with her 1903 prize because both concerned radioactivity. The distinction is useful: the earlier prize focused on physical research into radiation, while the later prize emphasised chemical discovery, separation, and study of new elements. Curie was also the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only individual to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie later won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, creating a remarkable mother-daughter Nobel legacy.