Marie Curie became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.
She shared the prize with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for research into radiation. Marie and Pierre investigated the unusual emissions from uranium compounds, while Becquerel had discovered uranium’s spontaneous radiation in 1896.
Curie later won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering polonium and radium and for studying radium’s properties. She remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific categories.
The 1903 Physics award is sometimes confused with Curie’s 1911 Chemistry award. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie also became a Nobel laureate, winning the 1935 Chemistry Prize, but Marie was the first woman Nobel laureate in Physics.