Caricature of Pierre and Marie Curie. Caption read “Radium.” Published in Vanity Fair, Dec. 22, 1904.

In 1903, the Nobel Prize in Physics was divided, one half awarded to Antoine Henri Becquerel “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity”, the other half jointly to Pierre Curie and Marie Curie “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.”

On Nov. 7, 1911, Marie Curie’s birthday (born 1867), she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”