Marie Curie is the 2019 issue in France’s ongoing series celebrating the great women in their history

MARIE CURIE

Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. She was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium (named after her native country) and radium. Under her direction, the world’s first studies into the treatment of neoplasms were conducted using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at a sanatorium in Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, of aplastic anemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

This series’ coins highlight the women who marked France’s History. Through their portrait and the significant events of their life, Monnaie de Paris’ engravers have transcribed those famous women’s personality. Some textures treated as all-over textile patterns appear in the background of the coins.

REVERSE: This represents the portrait of Marie Curie surrounded by her double surname and dates of birth and passing away. In the background, the texture is a reproduction of the scientific manuscripts of her works. It includes formulas related to the research that led her to be presented to the Nobel Prize.

OBVERSE: represents in the center, the couple formed by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre. They are surrounded by the evocation of the Nobel Prizes she has received; one with her husband in 1903, the second, on her own, in 1911. The background is made of a representation of the molecular structure of polonium, discovery that led her to be presented to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.