Marie Curie received the Davy Medal in 1903. The Royal Society awarded the chemistry medal jointly to Marie Curie and Pierre Curie for their researches on radium.
The Davy Medal was established by the Royal Society of London in 1877 and is named after the English chemist Humphry Davy. It recognizes an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry. The Curies’ award reflected the significance of their work isolating and investigating radioactive substances.
The same year was especially important in Curie’s career. In 1903, she and Pierre Curie shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel for their studies of radioactivity. Marie Curie therefore became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize.
The Davy Medal should not be confused with the Nobel Prize or with the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which Curie received alone for discovering polonium and radium and for studying their properties. The medal’s year, 1903, marks the Curies’ radium research award.