Marie and Irene Curie. Portrait of Marie Curie (1867-1934) & her eldest daughter Irene Curie (1897-1956, known as Joliot-Curie after her marriage in 1926). These two French scientists are the only mother-daughter pair of Nobel Prize winners. Marie shared the 1903 Nobel Physics Prize for her work on radioactivity. She won the 1911 Nobel Chemistry Prize for her discovery of the radioactive elements polonium & radium. Irene won the 1935 Nobel Chemistry Prize for creating an artificial" radioactive isotope of phosphorus. Both mother and daughter died of leukaemia, a form of cancer, probably because of exposure to radiation."