The Curie Spouses and the Nobel Prize

Abstract

The author presents the story of the strange nomination to the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. The nominees were exclusively Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie, and the true authorship of the nomination, ignoring in the initial phase Maria Skłodowska-Curie, was secret for almost one hundred years. Finally, the Prize was presented fifty-fifty to Henri Becquerel, and the Curie spouses. Maria Skłodowska-Curie encounters difficulties of another kind when receiving her Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1911, but with the help of her French and Swedish friends, she got off lightly. Although each Nobel Prize Winner should nominate the subsequent ones, Maria Curie never did it again after 1911.