Coordinates	8 °6 ′43.2 ″N79 °1 ′43.68 ″N
Name	Nérac
Region	Aquitaine
Department	Lot-et-Garonne
Arrondissement	Nérac
Canton	Nérac
Insee	47195
Postal code	47600
Intercommunality	Val d'Albret
Longitude	0.345039
Latitude	44.147971
Elevation m	71
Elevation min m	38
Elevation max m	191
Area km2	62.68
Population	6787
Population date	1999 }}

Nérac is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France.

See also

Communes of the Lot-et-Garonne department

External links

Town council website

Category:Communes of Lot-et-Garonne Category:Subprefectures in France

ca:Nerac ceb:Nérac cs:Nérac de:Nérac es:Nérac eu:Nérac fr:Nérac it:Nérac ms:Nérac nl:Nérac no:Nérac nn:Nérac oc:Nerac pms:Nérac pl:Nérac pt:Nérac ro:Nérac sl:Nérac fi:Nérac th:เนรัก uk:Нерак vi:Nérac vo:Nérac war:Nérac

Jean Moulin (June 20, 1899 – July 8, 1943) was a high-profile member of the French Resistance during World War II. He is remembered today as an emblem of the Resistance primarily due to his role in unifying the French resistance under de Gaulle and his courage and death at the hands of the Germans.

Before the war

Moulin was born in Béziers, France, and enlisted in the French Army in 1918. After World War I, he resumed his studies and obtained a degree in law in 1924. He then entered the prefectural administration as chef de cabinet to the deputy of Savoie in 1922, then as sous préfet of Albertville, from 1925 to 1930. He was France's youngest sous préfet at the time.

He married Marguerite Cerruti in September 1926, but the couple divorced in 1928.

In 1930, he was the sous préfet of Châteaulin, Brittany. During that time, he also drew political cartoons in the newspaper Le Rire under the pseudonym Romanin. He also became an illustrator for the Breton poet Tristan Corbière's books; among others he made an etching for La Pastorale de Conlie, Corbière's poem about the camp of Conlie where many Breton soldiers died in 1870. He also made friends with the Breton poets Saint-Pol-Roux in Camaret and Max Jacob in Quimper.

He became France's youngest préfet in the Aveyron département, based in the commune of Rodez, in January 1937.

During the Spanish Civil War, some believe he supplied arms from the Soviet Union to Spain. A more commonly accepted version of events is that he supplied French planes to the Republican forces from his position within the Aviation Ministry.

The Resistance

In 1939, Moulin was appointed préfet of the Eure-et-Loir département. The Germans arrested him in June 1940 because he refused to sign a German document that falsely blamed Senegalese French Army troops for civilian massacres. In prison, he attempted suicide by cutting his throat with a piece of broken glass. This left him with a scar that he would often hide with a scarf — the image of Jean Moulin remembered today.

In November 1940, the Vichy government ordered all préfets to dismiss left-wing elected mayors of towns and villages. When Moulin refused, he was himself removed from office.

He then lived in Saint-Andiol (Bouches-du-Rhône), and joined the French Resistance. Moulin reached London in September 1941 under the name Joseph Jean Mercier, and met General Charles de Gaulle, who asked him to unify the various resistance groups. On January 1, 1942, he parachuted into the Alpilles. Under the codenames Rex and Max, he met with the leaders of the resistance groups:

Henri Frenay (Combat)

Emmanuel d'Astier (Libération)

Jean-Pierre Lévy (Francs-tireurs)

Pierre Villon (Front national, not to be confused with the present-day far-right French political party Front national)

Pierre Brossolette (Comité d'action socialiste)

He succeeded in obtaining that the first three of these movements join together to form the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (M.U.R.) in January 1943. In February 1943, Moulin went back to London, accompanied by Charles Delestraint, head of the new Armée secrète group which grouped the M.U.R.'s military branches. He left on March 21, 1943 with orders to form the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR), a difficult task since the five resistance movements involved (beside the three already in the M.U.R.) wanted to keep its independence. The first meeting of the CNR took place in Paris on May 27, 1943.

In his work in shepherding the Resistance, Moulin was aided by his private administrative assistant Laure Diebold.

On June 21, 1943, Jean Moulin was arrested at a meeting with fellow Resistance leaders in the home of Doctor Frédéric Dugoujon in Caluire-et-Cuire, a suburb of Lyon. Moulin, Dugoujon, Henri Aubry (alias Avricourt and Thomas), Raymond Aubrac, Bruno Larat (alias Xavier-Laurent Parisot), André Lassagne (alias Lombard), Colonel Albert Lacaze, Colonel Emile Schwarzfeld (alias Blumstein) and René Hardy (alias Didot) were arrested.

Interrogated extensively in Lyon by Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo there, and later more briefly in Paris, Moulin never revealed anything to his captors. He died near Metz while on a train in transit towards Germany. The cause of death was injuries, suffered either during the torture itself or in a suicide attempt; Barbie alleged that suicide was the cause, and one Moulin biographer, Patrick Marnham, supports this explanation, though it is widely believed that Barbie personally beat Moulin to death.

Who betrayed Moulin?

René Hardy was caught and released by the Gestapo. They followed him when he came to the meeting at the doctor's house. Some believe that this was a deliberate act of treason; others think René Hardy was simply reckless. Two trials concluded that he was innocent.

A recent TV film about the life and death of Jean Moulin depicted René Hardy collaborating with the Gestapo, thus reviving the controversy. The Hardy family attempted to bring a lawsuit against the producers of the movie.

There have been many allegations in the post-war years that Moulin was a Communist because some of his friends were. No hard evidence has ever backed up this claim. Marnham looked into the allegations, but found no evidence to support the assertion (though members of the party could easily have seen him as a 'fellow traveler' due to his Communist friends and support for the Republican side in Spain). As préfet, Moulin even ordered the repression of Communist 'agitators' and went so far as to have police keep some under surveillance.

It has also been suggested, principally in Marnham's biography, that Moulin was betrayed by Communists. Marnham specifically points the finger at Raymond Aubrac and possibly at his wife, Lucie Aubrac. He makes the case that Communists did at times betray non-Communists to the Gestapo and that Aubrac has been linked to harsh actions during the purge of collaborators after the war.

To counteract the accusations leveled at Moulin, his personal secretary during the war, Daniel Cordier, has written his own biography of his former leader.

The legend

Moulin was initially buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His ashes were later transferred to The Panthéon on December 19, 1964. The speech given by André Malraux, writer and minister of the Republic, upon the transfer of his ashes is one of the most famous speeches in French history.

Today, Jean Moulin is used in French education to illustrate civic virtues, moral rectitude and patriotism. He is a symbol of the Resistance. Many schools and a university, as well as innumerable streets, squares and even a Paris tram station have been named after him. The Musée Jean Moulin commemorates his life and the Resistance. Jean Moulin is the third most popular name for a French Ecole primaire, Collège, and Lycée.

The Jean Pierre Melville film Army of Shadows (based on a book of the same name) depicts several famous events in Moulin's war experience, such as his visits to London, his reliance on his female assistant, his decoration by Charles de Gaulle and his parachuting back into France during the war. These events are not specifically attributed to Moulin, but the parallels are no doubt intentional, given the film's celebration of the resistance, and Moulin's iconic status. Jean Moulin became the most famous and honoured French Resistance fighter. He is known by practically all French people, thanks to his famous monochrome photo, with his scarf and his fedora. Other martyrs of the clandestine fight, such as Pierre Brossolette, Jean Cavaillès or Jacques Bingen, all of them organizers of the underground army, are overshadowed by his legend. In 1993, a commemorative French two franc coin was issued showing a partial image of Moulin against the Croix de Lorraine. The image was based on the iconic fedora and scarf photograph.

References

Bibliography

Baynac, Jacques. Les secrets de l'affaire Jean Moulin: Contexte, Causes Et Circonstances. Seuil: Paris, 1998. ISBN 2-02-033164-0

Clinton, Alan. Jean Moulin, 1899-1943: the French Resistance and the Republic. Palgrave: New York, 2002. ISBN 978-0-333-76486-2

Daniel Cordier. Jean Moulin. La République des catacombes. Gallimard: Paris, 1999. ISBN 2-07-074312-8

Hardy, René. Derniers mots: Mémoires. Fayard: Paris, 1984. ISBN 2-213-01320-9

Marnham, Patrick. The Death of Jean Moulin: Biography of a Ghost. John Murray: New York, 2001. ISBN 0-7126-6584-6 (Also published as ''Resistance and Betrayal ISBN 0-375-50608-X)

Moulin, Laure. Jean Moulin. Presses de la Cité: Paris, 1982. (En préface le discours de André Malraux). ISBN 2-258-01120-5

Noguères, Henri. La vérité aura le dernier mot. Seuil: Paris, 1985 ISBN 2-02-008683-2

Péan, Pierre. Vies et morts de Jean Moulin. Fayard: Paris, 1998. ISBN 2-213-60257-3

Storck-Cerruty, Marguerite. J'étais la femme de Jean Moulin. Régine Desforges: Paris, 1977. (Avec lettre-préface de Robert Aron, de l'Académie française). ISBN 2-901-98074-0

Sweets, John F.. The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944: A History of the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance. Northern Illinois University Press: De Kalb, 1976. ISBN 0-87580-061-0

External links

Jean Moulin and the French Resistance (English)

English translation of Malraux's speech

Brief list of important dates in the life of Jean Moulin (English)

Son of Béziers and leader of the French resistance in WWII (English)

Short film about Jean Moulin (English)

Category:1899 births Category:1943 deaths Category:People from Béziers Category:French Resistance members Category:Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany Category:French military personnel of World War I Category:Companions of the Liberation Category:Burials at the Panthéon

br:Jean Moulin ca:Jean Moulin cs:Jean Moulin cy:Jean Moulin da:Jean Moulin de:Jean Moulin es:Jean Moulin eo:Jean Moulin fr:Jean Moulin it:Jean Moulin la:Ioannes Moulin nl:Jean Moulin ja:ジャン・ムーラン pl:Jean Moulin pt:Jean Moulin ru:Мулен, Жан sk:Jean Moulin fi:Jean Moulin sv:Jean Moulin

Coordinates	8 °6 ′43.2 ″N79 °1 ′43.68 ″N
name	Marie Skłodowska–Curie
birth date	November 07, 1867
birth place	Warsaw, Russian held parts of Poland
death date	July 04, 1934
death place	Passy, Haute-Savoie, France
nationality	Polish
citizenship	Russian, later French
field	Physics, chemistry
work institutions	University of Paris
alma mater	University of Paris ESPCI
doctoral advisor	Henri Becquerel
doctoral students	André-Louis DebierneÓscar MorenoMarguerite Catherine Perey
known for	Radioactivity, polonium, radium
spouse	Pierre Curie (1895-1906)
prizes
footnotes	She is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences.She was the wife of Pierre Curie, and the mother of Irène Joliot-Curie and Ève Curie.
religion	Agnostic
signature	Marie Curie signature.svg }}

Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish–French physicist–chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry. She was the first female professor at the University of Paris. She was the first woman to be entombed on her own merits (in 1995) in the Paris Panthéon.

She was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, in Russian Poland, and lived there to age twenty-four. In 1891 she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) with her husband Pierre Curie (and with Henri Becquerel). Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, would similarly share a Nobel Prize. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and is the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences.

Her achievements include a theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes: the Curie Institute (Paris) and the Curie Institute (Warsaw).

While an actively loyal French citizen, Skłodowska–Curie (as she styled herself) never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element that she discovered "polonium" (1898) for her native country. During World War I she became a member of the Committee for a Free Poland (Komitet Wolnej Polski). In 1932 she founded a Radium Institute (now the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology) in her home town, Warsaw, headed by her physician-sister Bronisława.

Early life

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria's older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).

Maria's paternal grandfather Józef Skłodowski had been a respected teacher in Lublin, where he taught the young Bolesław Prus. Her father Władysław Skłodowski taught mathematics and physics, subjects that Maria was to pursue, and was also director of two Warsaw gymnasia for boys, in addition to lodging boys in the family home. Maria's mother Bronisława operated a prestigious Warsaw boarding school for girls; she suffered from tuberculosis and died when Maria was twelve.

Maria's father was an atheist; her mother—a devout Catholic. Two years earlier Maria's oldest sibling, Zofia, had died of typhus. The deaths of her mother and sister, according to Robert William Reid, caused Maria to give up Catholicism and become agnostic.

When she was ten years old, Maria began attending the boarding school that her mother had operated while she was well; next Maria attended a gymnasium for girls, from which she graduated on 12 June 1883. She spent the following year in the countryside with relatives of her father's, and the next with her father in Warsaw, where she did some tutoring.

On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings. This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria, her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life. Maria made an agreement with her sister, Bronisława, that she would give her financial assistance during Bronisława's medical studies in Paris, in exchange for similar assistance two years later. In connection with this, Maria took a position as governess: first with a lawyer's family in Kraków; then for two years in Ciechanów with a landed family, the Żorawskis, who were relatives of her father. While working for the latter family, she fell in love with their son, Kazimierz Żorawski, which was reciprocated by this future eminent mathematician. His parents, however, rejected the idea of his marrying the penniless relative, and Kazimierz was unable to oppose them. Maria lost her position as governess. She found another with the Fuchs family in Sopot, on the Baltic Sea coast, where she spent the next year, all the while financially assisting her sister.

At the beginning of 1890, Bronisława, a few months after she married Kazimierz Dłuski, invited Maria to join them in Paris. Maria declined because she could not afford the university tuition and was still counting on marrying Kazimierz Żorawski. She returned home to her father in Warsaw, where she remained till the fall of 1891. She tutored, studied at the clandestine Floating University, and began her practical scientific training in a laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture at Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town. The laboratory was run by her cousin Józef Boguski, who had been assistant in Saint Petersburg to the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.

In October 1891, at her sister's insistence and after receiving a letter from Żorawski, in which he definitively broke his relationship with her, she decided to go to France after all.

In Paris, Maria briefly found shelter with her sister and brother-in-law before renting a primitive garret and proceeding with her studies of physics, chemistry, and mathematics at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris).

Sorbonne

Skłodowska studied during the day and tutored evenings, barely earning her keep. In 1893, she was awarded a degree in physics and began work in an industrial laboratory at Lippman's. Meanwhile she continued studying at the Sorbonne, and in 1894, earned a degree in mathematics.

That same year, Pierre Curie entered her life. He was an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry, the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI). Skłodowska had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels; it was their mutual interest in magnetism that drew Skłodowska and Curie together.

Her departure for the summer to Warsaw only enhanced their mutual feelings for each other. She still was laboring under the illusion that she would be able to return to Poland and work in her chosen field of study. When she was denied a place at Kraków University merely because she was a woman,

New elements

In 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. He demonstrated that this radiation, unlike phosphorescence, did not depend on an external source of energy, but seemed to arise spontaneously from uranium itself. Becquerel had, in fact, discovered radioactivity.

Skłodowska–Curie decided to look into uranium rays as a possible field of research for a thesis. She used a clever technique to investigate samples. Fifteen years earlier, her husband and his brother had invented the electrometer, a sensitive device for measuring electrical charge. Using the Curie electrometer, she discovered that uranium rays caused the air around a sample to conduct electricity. Using this technique, her first result was the finding that the activity of the uranium compounds depended only on the quantity of uranium present. She had shown that the radiation was not the outcome of some interaction of molecules, but must come from the atom itself. In scientific terms, this was the most important single piece of work that she conducted.

Skłodowska–Curie's systematic studies had included two uranium minerals, pitchblende and torbernite (also known as chalcolite). Her electrometer showed that pitchblende was four times as active as uranium itself, and chalcolite twice as active. She concluded that, if her earlier results relating the quantity of uranium to its activity were correct, then these two minerals must contain small quantities of some other substance that was far more active than uranium itself.

In her systematic search for other substances beside uranium salts that emitted radiation, Skłodowska–Curie had found that the element thorium likewise, was radioactive.

She was acutely aware of the importance of promptly publishing her discoveries and thus establishing her priority. Had not Becquerel, two years earlier, presented his discovery to the Académie des Sciences the day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity, and even a Nobel Prize, would have gone to Silvanus Thompson instead. Skłodowska–Curie chose the same rapid means of publication. Her paper, giving a brief and simple account of her work, was presented for her to the Académie on 12 April 1898 by her former professor, Gabriel Lippmann.

Even so, just as Thompson had been beaten by Becquerel, so Skłodowska–Curie was beaten in the race to tell of her discovery that thorium gives off rays in the same way as uranium. Two months earlier, Gerhard Schmidt had published his own finding in Berlin.

At that time, however, no one else in the world of physics had noticed what Skłodowska–Curie recorded in a sentence of her paper, describing how much greater were the activities of pitchblende and chalcolite compared to uranium itself: "The fact is very remarkable, and leads to the belief that these minerals may contain an element which is much more active than uranium." She later would recall how she felt "a passionate desire to verify this hypothesis as rapidly as possible."

Pierre Curie was sure that what she had discovered was not a spurious effect. He was so intrigued that he decided to drop his work on crystals temporarily and to join her. On 14 April 1898, they optimistically weighed out a 100-gram sample of pitchblende and ground it with a pestle and mortar. They did not realize at the time that what they were searching for was present in such minute quantities that they eventually would have to process tons of the ore.

As they were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive substances, Skłodowska–Curie and her husband had no idea what price they would pay for the effect of their research upon their health.

The Curies undertook the arduous task of separating out radium salt by differential crystallization. From a ton of pitchblende, one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride was separated in 1902. By 1910, Skłodowska–Curie, working on without her husband, who had been killed accidentally by a horse drawn vehicle in 1906, had isolated the pure radium metal.

In an unusual decision, Marie Skłodowska–Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process, so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.

In 1903, under the supervision of Henri Becquerel, Marie was awarded her DSc from the University of Paris.

Nobel Prizes

In 1903 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."

Skłodowska–Curie and her husband were unable to go to Stockholm to receive the prize in person, but they shared its financial proceeds with needy acquaintances, including students.

Skłodowska–Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, she would receive the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."

A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.

Skłodowska–Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other person being Linus Pauling (for chemistry and for peace). Nevertheless, in 1911 the French Academy of Sciences refused to abandon its prejudice against women, and she failed by two votes to be elected a member. Elected instead was Édouard Branly, an inventor who had helped Guglielmo Marconi develop the wireless telegraph. It would be a doctoral student of Skłodowska–Curie, Marguerite Perey, who would become the first woman elected to membership in the Academy – over half a century later, in 1962.

Pierre's death

On 19 April 1906 Pierre was killed in a street accident. Walking across the Rue Dauphine in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels; his skull was fractured. While it has been speculated that previously he may have been weakened by prolonged radiation exposure, there are no indications that this contributed to the accident.

Skłodowska–Curie was devastated by the death of her husband. She noted that, as of that moment she suddenly had become "an incurably and wretchedly lonely person". On 13 May 1906, the Sorbonne physics department decided to retain the chair that had been created for Pierre Curie and they entrusted it to Skłodowska–Curie together with full authority over the laboratory. This allowed her to emerge from Pierre's shadow. She became the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne, and in her exhausting work regime she sought a meaning for her life.

Recognition for her work grew to new heights, and in 1911 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded her a second Nobel Prize, this time for Chemistry. A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by world-famous novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, encouraged her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country. He was a married man who was estranged from his wife. This resulted in a press scandal that was exploited by her academic opponents. Despite her fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia—the same that had led to the Dreyfus Affair-which also fueled false speculation that Skłodowska–Curie was Jewish. She was five years older than Langevin and was portrayed in the tabloids as a home-wrecker. Later, Skłodowska–Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Joliot, married Langevin's grandson, Michel Langevin.

Skłodowska–Curie's second Nobel Prize, in 1911, enabled her to talk the French government into funding the building of a private Radium Institute (Institut du radium, now the Institut Curie), which was built in 1914 and at which research was conducted in chemistry, physics, and medicine. The Institute became a crucible of Nobel Prize winners, producing four more, including her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

World War I

During World War I, Skłodowska-Curie pushed for the use of mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"), for the treatment of wounded soldiers. These units were powered using tubes of radium emanation, a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon. Skłodowska-Curie provided the tubes of radium, derived from the material she purified. Also, promptly after the war started, she donated the gold Nobel Prize medals she and her husband had been awarded, to the war effort. She was also active member in committees of Polish Polonia in France dedicated to Polish cause.

Post-war years

In 1921 Skłodowska-Curie was welcomed triumphantly when she toured the United States to raise funds for research on radium. These distractions from her scientific labors and the attendant publicity caused her much discomfort but provided resources needed for her work. Her second American tour in 1929 succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute, founded in 1925 with her sister, Bronisława, as director.

In her later years, Skłodowska-Curie headed the Pasteur Institute and a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the University of Paris.

Death

Skłodowska–Curie visited Poland for the last time in the spring of 1934. The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without proper safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark.

She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre. Sixty years later, in 1995, in honor of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Panthéon, Paris. She became the first – and so far the only – woman to be honored with interrment in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Her laboratory is preserved at the Musée Curie.

Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle. Even her cookbook is highly radioactive. They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.

Legacy

The physical and societal aspects of the work of the Curies contributed substantially to shaping the world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Cornell University professor L. Pearce Williams observes:

If the work of Maria Skłodowska–Curie helped overturn established ideas in physics and chemistry, it has had an equally profound effect in the societal sphere. To attain her scientific achievements, she had to overcome barriers that were placed in her way because she was a woman, in both her native and her adoptive country. This aspect of her life and career is highlighted in Françoise Giroud's Marie Curie: A Life, which emphasizes Skłodowska's role as a feminist precursor. She was ahead of her time, emancipated, independent, and in addition uncorrupted. Albert Einstein is reported to have remarked that she was probably the only person who was not corrupted by the fame that she had won.

Awards

Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.

Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)

Davy Medal (1903)

Matteucci Medal (1904)

Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)

Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)

The lives of famous scientists are not always luxurious. The Curies reportedly used part of their award money to replace wallpaper in their Parisian home and install modern plumbing into a bathroom.

Honors

Madame Curie was decorated with the French Legion of Honor. In Poland, she had received honorary doctorates from the Lwów Polytechnic (1912), Poznań University (1922), Kraków's Jagiellonian University (1924), and the Warsaw Polytechnic (1926).

Their elder daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for discovering that aluminum could be made radioactive and emit neutrons when bombarded with alpha rays. Their younger daughter, Ève Curie, later wrote a biography of her mother.

Michalina Mościcka, wife of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki, unveiled a 1935 statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute, which had been founded by Marie Curie. Within a decade, during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the monument suffered damage from gunfire. After the war, when maintenance was done, it was decided to leave the bullet-inflicted scars on the statue.

Tributes

As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has been an icon in the scientific world and has inspired many tributes and recognitions.

In 1995 she was the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon, Paris, alongside her husband Pierre Curie.

The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre, as is the element with atomic number 96 – curium.

Three radioactive minerals are named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite.

Skłodowska-Curie's likeness appeared on the Polish late-1980s inflationary 20,000-złoty banknote. Her likeness also has appeared on stamps and coins, as well as on the last French 500-franc note, before the franc was replaced by the euro.

In a 2009 poll carried out by New Scientist, Marie Curie was voted the "most inspirational woman in science". Curie received 25.1 per cent of all votes cast, nearly twice as many as second-place Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent).

Polish institutions named after Maria Skłodowska–Curie include:

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, founded in 1944;

Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology, in Warsaw

French institutions named after Maria Skłodowska–Curie include:

Pierre and Marie Curie University, the largest science, technology and medicine university in France, and successor to the faculty of science at the University of Paris, where Marie Curie taught. The university is home to the laboratory where the couple discovered radium.

The Curie Institute and Curie Museum, in Paris

In 2007, the Pierre Curie Paris Métro station was renamed the "Pierre et Marie Curie" station.

American institutions named after Maria Skłodowska–Curie include:

Curie Community at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, in Chicago, a memorial gathering room for students at the university

In Bayside, Queens, New York, another school named for her, Marie Curie M.S. 158, specializes in science and technology; as does Curie Metropolitan High School – located in Archer Heights, on Chicago's Southwest Side – which has a Technical, Performing Arts and IB program

The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, a stained-glass panel created by Jozef C. Mazur, may be found at the University at Buffalo Polish Room.

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on her life. "Marie Curie" also is the name of a character in a 1988 comedy, Young Einstein, by Yahoo Serious.

More recently, in 1997, a French film about Pierre and Marie Curie was released, Les Palmes de M. Schutz. It was adapted from a play of the same name. In the film, Marie Curie was played by Isabelle Huppert. Unlike the 1943 drama, Les Palmes de M. Shutz is a light comedy.

A KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honor.

See also

Eusapia Palladino

List of female Nobel laureates

List of Polish people – Physics

Marie Curie Cancer Care

List of people on stamps of Ireland (Marie Curie stamp, issued in 2000)

Marie Mattingly Meloney, organized drive to buy radium for Marie Curie

Notes

References

Robert Reid, Marie Curie, New York, New American Library, 1974.

Teresa Kaczorowska, Córka mazowieckich równin, czyli Maria Skłodowska–Curie z Mazowsza (Daughter of the Mazovian Plains: Maria Skłodowska–Curie of Mazowsze), Ciechanów, 2007.

L. Pearce Williams, "Curie, Pierre and Marie", Encyclopedia Americana, Danbury, Connecticut, Grolier, Inc., 1986, vol. 8, pp. 331–32.

Barbara Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, New York, W.W. Norton, 2005, ISBN 0-393-05137-4.

Naomi Pasachoff, Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0195092147.

Eve Curie, Madame Curie: A Biography, translated by Vincent Sheean, Da Capo Press, 2001, ISBN 0306810387.

Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995, ISBN 0-671-67542-7.

Françoise Giroud, Marie Curie: A Life, translated by Lydia Davis, Holmes & Meier, 1986, ASIN B000TOOU7Q.

Redniss, Lauren, Radioactive, Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, New York, Harper Collins, 2010, ISBN 9780061351327.

Fiction

A 2004 novel by Per Olov Enquist featuring Maria Skłodowska-Curie, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, and his Salpêtrière patient "Blanche" (Marie Wittman). The English translation was published in 2006.

External links

Out of the Shadows-A study of women physicists

Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska : The First Century of Their Impact on Human Knowledge

The official web page of Maria Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland in English.

Detailed Biography at Science in Poland website; with quotes, photographs, links etc.

European Marie Curie Fellowships

Marie Curie Fellowship Association

Marie Curie Cancer Care, UK

Marie Sklodowska Curie: Her Life as a Media Compendium

Marie and Pierre Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium Chronology from nobelprize.org

Annotated bibliography of Marie Curie from the Alsos Digital Library

Obituary, New York Times, 5 July 1934 Mme. Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science

Some places and memories related to Marie Curie

Marie Curie on the 500 French Franc and 20000 old Polish zloty banknotes.

– Animated biography of Marie Curie on DVD from an animated series of world and American history – Animated Hero Classics distributed by Nest Learning. – Live Action portrayal of Marie Curie on DVD from the Inventors Series produced by Devine Entertainment. – Portrayal of Marie Curie in a television mini series produced by the BBC

1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Nobel committee page; presentation speech, her award lecture etc.

Long biography at American Institute of Physics website. (Site also has a short version for kids entitled "Her story in brief!".)

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