Marie Curie, orig.Together they discovered the elements polonium (which Marie named after her native Poland) and radium, and they distinguished alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.Seeking the presence of radioactivity--recently discovered by Henri Becquerel in uranium--in other matter, she found it in thorium.For their work on radioactivity (a term she coined), the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics with Becquerel.In 1911 she won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering polonium and isolating pure radium, becoming the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.She studied at the Sorbonne (from 1891).