Paris in the Belle Époque studying the fluorescence of uranium salts, discovered radioactivity in 1896, and in 1903 was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery. Pierre Curie (1859-1906) and Marie Curie (1867-1934) jointly carried on Becquerel's work, discovering radium and polonium (1898). They jointly received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903. Marie Curie became the first female professor at the University of Paris and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1911. She was the first woman to be buried in the Panthéon. The neon light was used for the first time in Paris on 3 December 1910 in the Grand
Marie Curie initiative for creating the Radium Institute had come in 1909 from Pierre Paul Émile Roux, director of the Pasteur Institute, who had been disappointed that the University of Paris was not giving Curie a proper laboratory and had suggested that she move to the Pasteur Institute. Only then, with the threat of Curie leaving, did the University of Paris relent, and eventually the Curie Pavilion became a joint initiative of the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute. In 1910 Curie succeeded in isolating radium; she also defined an international standard for radioactive emissions that was eventually named for her