Collectors Corner^SM: The Collectibles Marketplace

Marie Curie has been featured on multiple coins honoring her scientific accomplishments, including this French 100 franc. Click image to enlarge.

"I am among those who think that science has great beauty.” — Marie Curie

Marie Curie was a brilliant Polish scientist and chemist who ignored the gender norms of her time, breaking down barriers and revolutionizing our scientific understanding of radiation.

As the daughter of a math and physics teacher, Curie grew up with a fierce curiosity and a love for learning. She longed for a higher education, but the primary universities in her home country of Poland would not let women attend. Instead, she took classes from Warsaw’s “floating universities,” a series of classes held in secret. She took these secret classes until she could afford to go to Paris and study at Sorbonne. While there, she earned two master’s degrees, one in physics and one in math, and later a doctorate in physics. Curie was the first woman in France to receive a doctorate.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” ~ Marie Curie

Inspired by the recent discovery of uranium, Curie was fascinated by radiation and decided to complete her doctoral thesis on the subject. Through their own research, she and her husband discovered two new elements. They named the first polonium after her home country of Poland and the second radium. While observing radium, she made an even more important discovery: radiation is not dependent on the organization of atoms. Instead, it is something that happens within the atom itself. She named this phenomenon radiation.

Making scientific breakthroughs wasn’t enough for Curie. She firmly believed that science should be used to help others and worked hard to find ways for her discoveries to benefit society. Through her studies of radium, she and her husband discovered that it could destroy diseased cells. She realized that this meant radiation could be an effective treatment for tumors, a treatment that is still saving lives today. She also used her thorough understanding of radiation to enhance the strength of X-ray machines, helping them take more accurate pictures.

In 1903, Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies in spontaneous radiation. In 1911, she became the first person ever to win a second Nobel Prize. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her work in radioactivity. In 1944, the element with atomic number 96 was discovered and named curium in honor of Pierre and Marie Curie’s groundbreaking scientific work.

In 1984, France issued a 100 franc coin featuring Marie Curie to honor her on the 50th anniversary of her death. It may seem odd that France chose to honor Curie since she was from Poland, but France is where she completed most of her research. This coin highlights the national importance of her legacy. The obverse of the coin features Marie Curie’s name and portrait. The reverse includes the inscriptions “physique” and “chimie,” which translate to “physics” and “chemistry,” to honor the incredible work Curie accomplished in both fields.