The Curie Family: Five Nobel Prizes, One Household

Every scientific dynasty in history stands in the shadow of one Paris household. Between 1903 and 1935, the Curie family won five Nobel Prizes — a record no family has approached since, and one that becomes stranger and more moving the closer you look.

The count

• Marie Curie: Physics 1903 and Chemistry 1911 — the only person ever to win Nobels in two sciences.
• Pierre Curie: Physics 1903, shared with his wife and Henri Becquerel.
• Irène Joliot-Curie (their daughter): Chemistry 1935.
• Frédéric Joliot-Curie (their son-in-law): Chemistry 1935, shared with Irène. At 35 he was then the youngest Chemistry laureate in history.

Five prizes, four laureates, one family. And there is a sixth medal with a Curie connection: in 1965, when UNICEF won the Peace Prize, the man who accepted it was Henry Labouisse — UNICEF's director and the husband of Marie's younger daughter, the writer Ève Curie. Ève, who lived to 102, liked to call herself "the failure of the family": everyone else, she joked, had won a Nobel.

Radium, twice over

What makes the family record more than a curiosity is that the second generation genuinely repeated the achievement of the first. Marie and Pierre discovered radioactivity's elements; thirty years later Irène and Frédéric discovered artificial radioactivity — the trick of making stable elements radioactive by bombardment. The parents found nature's radioactivity; the children taught humanity to create its own.

The discovery came at a painful moment. Marie lived just long enough to see the experiment that would win her daughter the prize, but died of aplastic anaemia — caused by decades of radiation exposure — in July 1934, one year before the award ceremony.

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."

— Marie Curie

The price

The Curies' notebooks from the 1890s are still so radioactive that they are stored in lead-lined boxes at France's national library; researchers who wish to consult them must sign a waiver. Pierre never lived to see the family's later triumphs — he was killed in a Paris street accident in 1906, at 46. Irène, like her mother, died of a radiation-linked leukaemia in 1956. The family gave science the atom's secrets, and paid for them in full.

Records within the record

The household's file at the Nobel Foundation contains an absurd density of firsts: first woman laureate (Marie, 1903), first double laureate (Marie, 1911), first mother-daughter pair of laureates (Marie and Irène), and the only married couples ever to share science prizes — it happened twice in the same family, in 1903 and 1935.

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Watch: Marie Curie Documentary

The competition

Which family comes second? The Braggs, father and son, shared a single Physics prize in 1915 — the only parent-child joint win, as we recount in our ranking of the youngest Nobel laureates. Niels Bohr and his son Aage both won Physics prizes (1922 and 1975), as did J.J. and George Thomson. All magnificent — and all exactly three medals short of the Curies.

One family, five prizes, two elements, and a legacy measured in both scientific revolutions and lead-lined notebooks. The record is 90 years old and counting, and nothing on the horizon suggests it will ever fall.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Nobel Prizes did the Curie family win?

Five: two for Marie Curie, one for Pierre Curie, and the shared 1935 Chemistry prize of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

Why are the Curies' notebooks still dangerous?

They remain contaminated with radium, which has a half-life of about 1,600 years, so they are stored in lead-lined boxes and consulted only with precautions.

Which family comes second to the Curies?

No family is close. The Braggs, Bohrs and Thomsons each produced two laureates — three prizes short of the Curie household.