I too love Marie Curie and the 1927 Solvay Conference's picture (which sits in my living room for the edification of my kids!)
She's a hero here in France but I don't know about her reputation in the English speaking world.
She was a very amazing person. Born in Poland, she studied secretly for years in her native country, because higher education was not opened to females! Then she moved to Paris to join her sister and continued her education during the day, while tutoring in the evenings to pay for it.
- - -
There was a nice play (in French) that I saw in 1989, called "Les Palmes de monsieur Schutz"
A movie was later made from the play. I didn't see the movie but hear it's not too bad for that kind of adaptation from scene to screen (and it has cameos from Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and Georges Charpak).
It was created as communist-approved alternative to KUL(Catholic University of Lublin - the only university independent from communist government in 1944-1989 Poland). Now it's the other way around (KUL is heavily influenced by catholic church, and umcs is more-or-less independent).
BTW - my university uses French order of writting Maria name "Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej w Lublinie". Maria sometimes used French order (with husband surname first), and sometimes used Polish order (with husband surname second), but rarely skipped "Skłodowska" altogether.
Comments
I too love Marie Curie and the 1927 Solvay Conference's picture (which sits in my living room for the edification of my kids!)
She's a hero here in France but I don't know about her reputation in the English speaking world.
She was a very amazing person. Born in Poland, she studied secretly for years in her native country, because higher education was not opened to females! Then she moved to Paris to join her sister and continued her education during the day, while tutoring in the evenings to pay for it.
- - -
There was a nice play (in French) that I saw in 1989, called "Les Palmes de monsieur Schutz"
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Palmes_de_monsieur_Schutz
A movie was later made from the play. I didn't see the movie but hear it's not too bad for that kind of adaptation from scene to screen (and it has cameos from Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and Georges Charpak).
> She's a hero here in France
and obviously in Poland. But here we call her with her full Polish(hers)-French(husband) name, not only the French part.
a new bridge in Warsaw was recently named after her http://goo.gl/maps/Y1X5d
And there is a university in Lublin named after her too.
I've graduated it :)
It was created as communist-approved alternative to KUL(Catholic University of Lublin - the only university independent from communist government in 1944-1989 Poland). Now it's the other way around (KUL is heavily influenced by catholic church, and umcs is more-or-less independent).
BTW - my university uses French order of writting Maria name "Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej w Lublinie". Maria sometimes used French order (with husband surname first), and sometimes used Polish order (with husband surname second), but rarely skipped "Skłodowska" altogether.
there is heck a lot of stuff around named, the bridge is just the newest of them :)
She studied on the underground university not because she was female but because Poland was under Russian occupation; see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_University
... and the Russians severely limited education opportunities for females ;-)