Nobel Prize in Physics

The French Academy's 1903 nomination named Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie, but not Marie. The Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler, a supporter of women in science, warned Pierre. Pierre replied that a prize for radioactivity that ignored Marie's role would be wrong. An earlier nomination of Marie was counted, and on 10 December 1903 half the prize went to Becquerel and half to the Curies, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."

The wording avoided polonium and radium, which chemists on the committee wanted to keep open for a future chemistry prize.

Exhausted and ill, the Curies did not travel to Stockholm until June 1905, when Pierre gave the lecture. The prize money paid for their first laboratory assistant. Fame brought what Marie called the invasion of publicity, which fell on their quiet working life like a disaster.