Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize when she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.
She received the award with her husband, Pierre Curie, and physicist Henri Becquerel for research into radiation. Becquerel had discovered spontaneous radioactivity in uranium, while the Curies developed the investigation of radioactive substances and introduced the term radioactivity.
Curie later became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. Her second award was the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, recognizing her discovery of radium and polonium, her isolation of radium, and her study of that element.
A common mix-up is confusing Marie Curie’s two prizes: her first was in Physics, while her second was in Chemistry. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie also became a Nobel laureate, winning the 1935 Chemistry prize with Frédéric Joliot-Curie.