Nobel Peace Prize for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses". Alfred Nobel's will further specified that the prize be awarded by a committee of five people chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. Nobel died in 1896 and he did not leave an explanation for choosing peace as a prize category. As he was a trained chemical engineer, the categories for chemistry and physics were obvious choices. The reasoning behind the peace prize is less clear. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, his friendship with Bertha von Suttner, a peace activist and later recipient of
Marie Curie of Paris decided to retain the chair that had been created for her late husband and to offer it to Marie. She accepted it, hoping to create a world-class laboratory as a tribute to her husband Pierre. She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris. Curie's quest to create a new laboratory did not end with the University of Paris, however. In her later years, she headed the Radium Institute ("Institut du radium", now Curie Institute, "Institut Curie"), a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the Pasteur Institute and the University of Paris. The