Marie Curie - Awards, Honours and Tributes

Awards, Honours and Tributes

As one of the most famous female scientists to date, Marie Curie has become an icon in the scientific world and has received tributes from across the globe, even in the realm of pop culture. 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).

Poland and France declared 2011 the Year of Marie Curie, and the United Nations declared that this would be the International Year of Chemistry. An artistic installation celebrating "Madame Curie" filled the Jacobs Gallery at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art. On 7 November, Google celebrated her birthday with a special Google Doodle. On 10 December, the New York Academy of Sciences celebrated the centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel prize in the presence of Princess Madeleine of Sweden.

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. Awards that she received include:

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
• Davy Medal (1903, with Pierre)
• Matteucci Medal (1904; with Pierre)
• Elliott Cresson Medal (1909)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)

• Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1921)

In 1995, she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon, Paris. The curie (symbol Ci), a unit of radioactivity, is named in honour of her and Pierre (although the commission which agreed on the name never clearly stated whether the standard was named after Pierre, Marie or both of them). The element with atomic number 96 was named curium. Three radioactive minerals are also named after the Curies: curite, sklodowskite, and cuprosklodowskite. She received numerous honorary degrees from universities across the world. The Marie Curie Actions fellowship program of the European Union for young scientists wishing to work in a foreign country is named after her. 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).

Numerous locations around the world are named after her. In 2007 a metro station in Paris was renamed to honour both of the Curies. Polish nuclear research reactor Maria is named after her. The 7000 Curie asteroid is also named after her. A KLM McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (registration PH-KCC) is named in her honour.

Several institutions bear her name, starting with the two Curie institutes - the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology, in Warsaw and the Institut Curie in Paris. She is the patron of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, founded in 1944; and Pierre and Marie Curie University, in Paris, established in 1971. There are two museums dedicated to Marie Curie. In 1967 a museum devoted to Curie was established in Warsaw's "New Town", at her birthplace on ulica Freta (Freta Street). Her laboratory is preserved at the Musée Curie in Paris, and has been open to public since 1992.

Several works of art bear her likeness, or are dedicated to her. Michalina Mościcka, wife of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki, unveiled a 1935 statue of Marie Curie before Warsaw's Radium Institute. 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 marks on the statue and its pedestal. In 1955 Jozef Mazur created a stained glass panel of her, the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medallion, featured in the University at Buffalo Polish Room.

Books dedicated to her include Madame Curie (1938), written by her daughter, Ève. In 1987 Françoise Giroud wrote a biography, Marie Curie: A Life. In 2005, Barbara Goldsmith wrote Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie. In 2011, another book appeared, Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout, by Lauren Redniss.

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon starred in the 1943 U.S. Oscar-nominated film, Madame Curie, based on her life. 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.

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

On the 2011 centenary of Marie Curie's second Nobel Prize (1911), an allegorical mural was painted on the façade of her Warsaw birthplace. It depicts an infant Maria Skłodowska holding a test tube from which emanate the elements that she would discover as an adult: polonium and radium.