–becomes the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Marie Curie, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel “in recognition of their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.”
Eight years later (1901), Marie Curie would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as well. Curie was the first person to win two separate Nobel Prizes.
[The second was Linus Pauling (Chemistry–1954, Peace–1962)]. Note that Becquerel was also the doctoral supervisor of Marie at the University of Paris. Marie, in turn, was the mother of a Nobel Laureate, as well, Irene Joliot–Curie (chemistry: aluminum research).
CURIE CONTEXT: 1867: born Marie Sk?odowska in Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire; 1891: moves to Paris; 1894: meets Paul Curie (then an Instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry (Paris); later in 1894: Marie’s first husband dies; 1895: Marie marries Paul Curie; July, 1898 > Marie and Paul discover chemical element Polonium (named after her native Poland); December, 1898: Marie and Paul discover Radium; 1906: Paul Curie dies (struck by a horse–drawn vehicle); 1909: Marie becomes first female professor at the Sorbonne (Paris); 1921: Marie Curie and Claudius Regaud found the Curie Institute (for cancer research) in Paris; 1932: Curie founds Radium Institute (oncology) back in her hometown Warsaw in Poland; 1934: succumbs to radiation poisoning in Savoy (France in modern times)