Constructing a Nobel Prize: The Case of Madame Curie

On December 10, 1911, Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry, after the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, half of which went to Marie and her husband Pierre and the other half to Henri Becquerel. If we analyze Marie Curie’s scientific work from her husband’s death in 1906 until 1911, we find no particular discovery that deserved a second Nobel Prize. However, the reasons that led to this second prize are to be found in what Curie constructed around the element radium, and how she managed to make the Curie couple survive and take its place. Marie Curie took the place of the former couple both scientifically and institutionally (for example, by obtaining the chair at the Sorbonne) and through great achievements (for example, the Institut du Radium). She also replaced the former pair both as an image and as a presence, eventually becoming an icon of the new physics.