Marie Curie

Marie Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for the study of radioactivity, then won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on her own for discovering polonium and radium. Others have won two Nobels, but none has won in two different scientific fields.

Linus Pauling won in Chemistry and Peace, and Frederick Sanger and John Bardeen each won twice in the same science.

Context

The 1903 physics prize was shared three ways, between Marie Curie, her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and she was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. Her 1911 chemistry prize recognized the discovery of polonium and radium and her work in isolating radium.

Pauling won the chemistry prize in 1954 and the peace prize in 1962, and John Bardeen won the physics prize twice, in 1956 and 1972. Frederick Sanger won chemistry twice, in 1958 and 1980, and K. Barry Sharpless also won chemistry twice, in 2001 and 2022.

Curie died in 1934 of a blood disease that is generally thought to have been caused by years of exposure to radiation. Her notebooks from the period are still radioactive and are kept under special conditions. Her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, making the family one of the most decorated in science.