The Curies are the most decorated scientific family in history, built on the partnership of Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867–1934) and her husband Pierre Curie (1859–1906). Marie, born in Warsaw, and Pierre, a Parisian physicist, married in 1895 and worked side by side on radioactivity — a word Marie coined — sharing both a laboratory and, in 1903, a Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel.
The family's gift for science passed directly to the next generation and, strikingly, married into it. The Curies' elder daughter, Irène, followed her mother into the laboratory and wedded Frédéric Joliot, a brilliant younger physicist; the couple took the joined surname Joliot-Curie and together discovered artificial radioactivity, for which they shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Marie had by then trained her own daughter much as she and Pierre had trained each other — continuity of method and mentorship running straight down the bloodline. The younger daughter, Ève Curie, broke the pattern to become a writer and journalist, authoring the definitive biography of her mother.
Even Ève, the family's one non-scientist, married into its record: her husband, the American diplomat Henry Richardson Labouisse Jr., accepted the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of UNICEF, which he directed.
Counted together, five members of the Curie family were named Nobel laureates — Marie twice — a tally no other family has matched. Marie remains the only person ever to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry.
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