Marie Curie won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering research on radioactivity.
She shared the prize with her husband, Pierre Curie, and physicist Henri Becquerel. Becquerel had discovered spontaneous radiation from uranium, while the Curies investigated the phenomenon in greater depth. Marie Curie also introduced the term “radioactivity.”
Her later work led to the discovery of the elements polonium and radium. In 1911, she won a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for her discoveries concerning radium and polonium and for isolating radium.
A common mix-up is that Marie Curie did not win both of her Nobel Prizes in Physics. Her second award was in Chemistry. She remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields, although other laureates have won multiple science prizes in the same field.