Jean Frederic JOLIOT-CURIE: French / Irene JOLIOT-CURIE: French. Joint winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935, the JOLIOT-CURIEs were communists from the late 1930s. In 1937 Frederic was organising armaments for the Spanish Government during the Civil War before joining the French party in 1944; and in 1938 Irene, daughter of Pierre and Marie CURIE, was a member of a communist anti-war committee in France. Frederic was later the head of the French atomic energy programme until dismissed in 1950 following his speech to the Communist Party Congress. Irene was dropped from the Atomic Commission the following year