Nobel Prize Recipient. Irene Joliot-Curie received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, sharing the award with her husband Frédéric Joliot. The couple received the coveted award, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements." She received 18 nominations for the Nobel candidacy. The couple married on October 9, 1926 and by 1928 they were signing their research papers jointly. The couple merged their surnames to Joliot-Curie, yet their scientific papers were signed “Joliot” or “Curie.” The award was given after the 1934 publication of “Artificial Production of Radioactive Elements- Chemical Proof of the Transmutation of the Elements.” Born as the oldest of two daughters, her parents were noted scientist Pierre Curie, who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Sklodowska Curie. Her mother also received the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her family has received the most Nobel Prizes ever awarded. Although she began in public schools, her parents were keen on providing her with an excellent education. She was recognized for her mathematical talents early in her education. For two years, she was one of the nine students of The Cooperative, a collection of students from the most academic homes in Paris, who studied a variety of subjects from the arts and languages to the sciences. She attended a private high school, before beginning her studies at the Faculty of Science at the Sorbonne to complete her baccalaureate. She took nursing courses during college. During World War I, she served starting in 1916 as a nurse radiographer. Not only did she teach physicians how to locate in wounded soldiers the scrap metal from battle field explosions, she taught herself how to repair her equipment. For her war service, she was decorated. After the war, she returned to the university graduating in 1918 with double degrees, one in mathematics and the other in chemistry. She became a Doctor of Science in 1925, having prepared a thesis on the alpha rays of polonium. She met her husband in 1924 at the university. Either alone or in collaboration with her husband, she did important work on natural and artificial radioactivity, transmutation of elements, and nuclear physics. Politically as a member of the Socialist party since 1938, she was also one of the first three women to be a member of a French government, serving as undersecretary for Scientific Research in 1936. During World War II, she became ill with tuberculosis, hence with the Nazi Forces invasion, she and her children escaped from France to Switzerland for two years. In 1945, she was one of the six commissioners of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission or CEA, which was created by Charles de Gaulle and the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Her mother was Polish and she and her sister spent their childhood summer visiting relatives in Poland. Since her husband had close connections to the Communist party after going to Russia for research, she had difficulty traveling, especially to the United States. In 1948 she was one of the scientists who created the first French nuclear reactor. Starting in October of 1939, they had placed all of their documentation on nuclear fission in the vaults of the French Academy of Sciences, where it remained until 1949. This was done to avoid the use by the military during the war. She and her husband supported world peace. She was a supporter of Women’s Rights as doors in the scientific community were closed to her. Many of the scientific learned societies did not allow women to be members, hence she could not be a candidate for many awards . Besides the Nobel Prize, she received the Barnard Gold Medal for Meritorious Service to Science in 1940 with her husband, became an Officer of the Legion of Honor, and after her death, her name was added to the German monument for x-ray and radium martyrs. The couple had a son and a daughter, who became successful scientists. She died of acute leukemia related to a serious accidental radiation exposure in 1946. Her husband died two years later of liver failure related to radiation exposure. Both were given state funerals, but at her request, no religious elements or military participation at her funeral.