Couples Who Changed Science Forever

What all might be included in couple goals? Researching together? Making ground breaking discoveries? Winning the Nobel? Well, unusual as it might sound; history and the Nobel prize have seen quite a few examples of people making this a reality. From collaborators in the laboratory to better-halves at home; such pairs of interesting- and super smart people have proven that romance can find its way through anything; even science! 

Marie Skłodowska-Curie & Pierre Curie

• Why they’re interesting: Probably one of the most famous couples in Science of all times… Marie and Pierre met in 1894 when she worked in Pierre’s lab; they were married the following year and worked together further under challenging financial and safety conditions for their research and livelihood. 

The usage of radioactivity to isolate & discover the element polonium (which has been named after the country of Marie’s birth), often called “radiation phenomena,” earned the couple a Nobel Prize in Physics. The committee originally proposed only her husband and Henri Becquerel who figured out radioactivity as candidates, but Pierre Curie insisted that his wife share the honour and thus in 1903; Marie became the world’s first woman ever to receive a Nobel Prize.

 In 1911, for the isolation of radium, she was awarded another Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was- and still is- the only person to be awarded Nobel Prizes in two scientific categories. By that time Curie was world-famous, and the director of the Curie Laboratory at the newly established Radium Institute (today the Curie Institute).

• Cool fact: Marie and Pierre’s daughter Irène Joliot-Curie (born 1897) also went ahead to win the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frédèric Joliot-Curie.

Gerty & Carl Cori 

• Why they’re interesting: They met while being students at the German University of Prague and were married in 1920, receiving their medical degrees the same year. Immigrating to the United States in 1922, the two were later considered American biochemists. This husband-and-wife team’s discovery of a phosphate-containing form of the simple sugar glucose, and its universal importance to carbohydrate metabolism led to an understanding of hormonal influence on the interconversion of sugars and starches in the animal organisms. For this, they were awarded (along with Bernardo Houssay) the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1947.

Gerty Cori fought through immense discrimination as one of the first women in biochemistry, with support from her husband. When offered the Nobel; Carl refused to accept the Prize without her, ensuring she was properly recognized for their discovery of the Cori cycle which explains how the body processes glucose– That’s some green flag behaviour right there!! 

• Cool fact: They took huge pay cuts to work together—Gerty even started as a research assistant despite having the same qualifications as Carl.

Esther & Joshua Lederberg 

• Why they’re interesting: The American scientist couple met and married as students; when Joshua was a student at Yale university and Esther at Stanford. Lederberg married Esther M. Zimmer in 1946 after she completed her Masters, and went ahead to pursue a Ph.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1950. Joshua meanwhile settled in his career as a professor at the same university; and the couple kept collaborative research continued there. Esther Lederberg discovered the lambda bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria, helping to lay the foundation for genetic engineering. She initially reported the discovery in 1951 while she was a PhD student and later provided a detailed description in a 1953 paper in the journal Genetics. But she was often overshadowed by her husband, Joshua, who won a Nobel Prize in 1958—without her! By the time Joshua won the Nobel, research centers that were recruiting him saw Esther merely as his wife and research assistant rather than an independent scientist.

• Cool fact: Joshua publicly acknowledged her contributions later, but at the time, she wasn’t even invited to the Nobel ceremony. Like many other women scientists at Stanford University, Lederberg struggled for professional recognition and advocated for her rights in the second wave of feminism. Later, it was said that Esther had to fight to stay employed at Stanford after divorcing Joshua.

May-Britt & Edvard Moser 

• Why they’re interesting: This Norwegian couple did their postdoctoral fellowship together as co‐Laureates, first at the University of Edinburgh and later as visiting scientists in John O´Keefe´s laboratory in London.Years of research resulted in them discovering grid cells in the brain, which help animals (and humans) navigate space—basically, the brain’s GPS system.The awareness of one’s location and how to find the way to other places is crucial for both humans and animals. In 2005 May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser discovered a type of cell that is important for determining position close to the hippocampus, an area located in the center of the brain. Thus, for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain; the couple together received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology/medicine.

• Cool fact: They were high school sweethearts who worked together from their Ph.D. days onward. Their discovery also helps explain how memory and Alzheimer’s works.