261-tir32
Bronze medal, from the Paris Mint (cornucopia hallmark from 1880).
Minted in 1968.
Minimal wear, beautiful copy with chocolate patina on the reverse.
Slight traces of oxidation.
Engraver / Artist : Josette HÉBERT-COËFFIN (1908-1974).
Dimensions : 68mm.
Weight : 176 g.
Metal : bronze.
Hallmark on the edge (mark on the edge) : cornucopia + bronze + 1968.
Quick and neat delivery.
The stand is not for sale.
The support is not for sale
Marie Skłodowska-Curie, or simply Marie Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska (pronounced [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska] Listen) on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw (Poland, then under Russian domination) and died on July 4, 1934 in Passy (Haute-Savoie) , is a Polish physicist and chemist, naturalized French.
Marie Curie and Pierre Curie — her husband — shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with Henri Becquerel for their research on radiation. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on polonium and radium.
An exceptional scientist, she is the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize, and to date the only woman to have received two. To this day, she remains the only person to have been rewarded in two distinct scientific fields1.
She was also the first woman to win the Davy medal in 1903, with her husband, for her work on radium2. Part of his experience notebooks are kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and have been digitized3.
Marie Curie and Pierre Curie — her husband — shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with Henri Becquerel for their research on radiation. In 1911, she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on polonium and radium.
An exceptional scientist, she is the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize, and to date the only woman to have received two. To this day, she remains the only person to have been rewarded in two distinct scientific fields1.
She was also the first woman to win the Davy medal in 1903, with her husband, for her work on radium2. Part of his experience notebooks are kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and have been digitized3.
Maria Salomea Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, then in the Russian Empire, to a father of noble origin (herb Dołęga), a professor of mathematics and physics, and a mother who was a schoolteacher. She was the youngest of three sisters, Zofia (1863-1876), Bronisława (Bronia) Dłuska (1865-1939)4 and Helena Szalay (1866-1961), and one brother, Józef Skłodowski (1863-1937). .
In the space of two years, she lost her sister Zofia, who died of typhus in January 1876, and her mother, who succumbed to tuberculosis on May 9, 1878. She then took refuge in studies where she excelled in all subjects, and where she was awarded the maximum mark. She thus obtained her secondary school diploma with the gold medal in 1883. She adhered to the positivist doctrine of Auguste Comte and joined the illegal Flying University, which participated in Poland in the clandestine education of the masses in reaction to the Russification of society by the Russian Empire.
She wishes to pursue higher education and teach like the Flying University, but these studies are prohibited for women in her native country. When her older sister, Bronia, leaves to study medicine in Paris, Maria takes a job as a governess in the provinces, hoping to save up to join her, while initially aiming to return to Poland to teach. After three years, she returned to Warsaw, where a cousin allowed her to enter a laboratory5.
Graduate studies
In 1891, she left for Paris, where she was hosted by her sister and her brother-in-law, rue d'Allemand, not far from the Gare du Nord. On November 3, 1891, she registered to study physics at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. Among the 776 students at the Faculty of Sciences in January 1895, there were 27 women6. If most of the students in the medical faculty are foreigners, there are only 7 foreigners out of the 27 science students.
In Mars 1892, she moved to a furnished room on Rue Flatters in the Latin Quarter, quieter and closer to the faculty facilities. She took lessons from physicists Edmond Bouty and Gabriel Lippmann and mathematicians Paul Painlevé and Paul Appell.
A year later, in July 1893, she obtained her license in physical sciences, being first in her class. During the summer, he was awarded a scholarship of 600 rubles, which allowed him to continue his studies in Paris. A year later, in July 1894, she obtained her license in mathematical sciences, being second. She then hesitates to return to Poland7.
At the beginning of 1894, she joined the physical research laboratory of Gabriel Lippmann, within which the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry entrusted her with research work on the magnetic properties of different steels. She works there in cramped conditions and in Spartan conditions, and is therefore looking for a way to carry out her own work. Professor Józef Kowalski from the University of Friborg then introduced her at an evening to Pierre Curie, who is head of physics work at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry and also studies magnetism, with whom she goes end up agreeing to work.
During this collaboration a mutual inclination developed between the two scientists. Marie Skłodowska returns to Warsaw, to be closer to her family, and with the aim of teaching and participating in the emancipation of Poland, but Pierre Curie asks her to return to Paris to live with him. The couple married in Sceaux on July 26, 1895.
During the year 1895-1896, she prepared at the faculty for the aggregation competition for the teaching of young girls in the mathematics section, in which she was accepted first. However, she did not take a teaching position, wishing to prepare a doctoral thesis. At the same time, Marie Skłodowska (henceforth Curie) also took classes with Marcel Brillouin8 and documented her first research work on steels. On September 12, 1897, she gave birth to her first daughter, Irene.
Doctoral thesis, discovery of radium
Doctoral thesis by Marie Curie.
The discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895 aroused great interest in the scientific community and gave rise to numerous research activities. On the other hand, the Becquerel rays, discovered by Henri Becquerel, have not yet aroused such enthusiasm. Marie Curie, who was then looking for a subject for her doctoral thesis, chose to devote herself to the study of this radiation. In 1897, she began her thesis work on the study of radiation produced by uranium, at that time still called uranium rays because they were believed to be specific to this element9 until she discovered the radioactivity of thorium, shortly after Gerhard Carl Schmidt10. She endeavors to quantify the ionizing capacities of uranium salts, in a rudimentary workshop made available to her by the director of Education and Research.
Marie Curie and Henri Poincaré at the first Solvay Congress in 1911.
Plaque at the entrance to the physics amphitheater of the Sorbonne (nowadays Lefebvre amphitheater).
Following the award of the Nobel Prize, Pierre Curie was appointed in October 1904 as professor holding a new chair of physics at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Paris and obtained the construction of a laboratory in the courtyard of the faculty annex dedicated to the PCN certificate located at 12 rue Cuvier. In November 1904, Marie Curie obtained the position of project manager of the chair with an annual salary of 2,400 francs.
On April 19, 1906, Pierre died, accidentally run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Marie Curie suffered lastingly from this loss and was supported in the difficult years that followed by Pierre's father, Eugène Curie, and by her brother Jacques Curie. She then became the first woman in France to direct a university laboratory20. From 1906 to 1934, it welcomed 45 women without exercising sexist selection in its recruitment21. She moved in 1907 to rue du chemin de fer in Sceaux in order to be closer to the place where her husband was buried.
Marie Curie was given the course on May 1, 1906, replacing Pierre, becoming the first woman professor at the Sorbonne22. His inaugural lesson took place on November 5, 190623 in the physics amphitheater of the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne, where journalists, artists, political figures and women of the world crowded together. The Journal greeted the event in these terms17:
“it is […] a great feminist victory that we are celebrating on this day. For, if women are allowed to give higher education to students of both sexes, where will the supposed superiority of the male man be? Truly I tell you, the time is near when women will become human beings. »
She was appointed full professor of the chair on November 16, 1908. The title of the chair then became general physics and radioactivity.
In 1910, assisted by Professor André-Louis Debierne, Marie Curie managed to isolate one gram of radium in the form of pure metal. The same year she published the treatise on radioactivity. Anticlericals, Dreyfusards and freethinkers refusing the systematic election of anti-Dreyfusard candidates at the Institut de France24 advised him to apply to the Academy of Sciences, but it was Édouard Branly who was elected, with a majority of two votes, presumably due to both anti-feminist and xenophobic conservatism17.
At the beginning of November 1911, she participated in the first Solvay Congress, organized and financed by the Belgian chemist and industrialist Ernest Solvay. This congress brings together many physicists, such as Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford. She is the only woman at this congress and almost the only one for the following ones (for example, there is the Austrian Lise Meitner).
The diploma accompanying Marie Sklodowsk's 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
In the space of two years, she lost her sister Zofia, who died of typhus in January 1876, and her mother, who succumbed to tuberculosis on May 9, 1878. She then took refuge in studies where she excelled in all subjects, and where she was awarded the maximum mark. She thus obtained her secondary school diploma with the gold medal in 1883. She adhered to the positivist doctrine of Auguste Comte and joined the illegal Flying University, which participated in Poland in the clandestine education of the masses in reaction to the Russification of society by the Russian Empire.
She wishes to pursue higher education and teach like the Flying University, but these studies are prohibited for women in her native country. When her older sister, Bronia, leaves to study medicine in Paris, Maria takes a job as a governess in the provinces, hoping to save up to join her, while initially aiming to return to Poland to teach. After three years, she returned to Warsaw, where a cousin allowed her to enter a laboratory5.
Graduate studies
In 1891, she left for Paris, where she was hosted by her sister and her brother-in-law, rue d'Allemand, not far from the Gare du Nord. On November 3, 1891, she registered to study physics at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. Among the 776 students at the Faculty of Sciences in January 1895, there were 27 women6. If most of the students in the medical faculty are foreigners, there are only 7 foreigners out of the 27 science students.
In Mars 1892, she moved to a furnished room on Rue Flatters in the Latin Quarter, quieter and closer to the faculty facilities. She took lessons from physicists Edmond Bouty and Gabriel Lippmann and mathematicians Paul Painlevé and Paul Appell.
A year later, in July 1893, she obtained her license in physical sciences, being first in her class. During the summer, he was awarded a scholarship of 600 rubles, which allowed him to continue his studies in Paris. A year later, in July 1894, she obtained her license in mathematical sciences, being second. She then hesitates to return to Poland7.
At the beginning of 1894, she joined the physical research laboratory of Gabriel Lippmann, within which the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry entrusted her with research work on the magnetic properties of different steels. She works there in cramped conditions and in Spartan conditions, and is therefore looking for a way to carry out her own work. Professor Józef Kowalski from the University of Friborg then introduced her at an evening to Pierre Curie, who is head of physics work at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry and also studies magnetism, with whom she goes end up agreeing to work.
During this collaboration a mutual inclination developed between the two scientists. Marie Skłodowska returns to Warsaw, to be closer to her family, and with the aim of teaching and participating in the emancipation of Poland, but Pierre Curie asks her to return to Paris to live with him. The couple married in Sceaux on July 26, 1895.
During the year 1895-1896, she prepared at the faculty for the aggregation competition for the teaching of young girls in the mathematics section, in which she was accepted first. However, she did not take a teaching position, wishing to prepare a doctoral thesis. At the same time, Marie Skłodowska (henceforth Curie) also took classes with Marcel Brillouin8 and documented her first research work on steels. On September 12, 1897, she gave birth to her first daughter, Irene.
Doctoral thesis, discovery of radium
Doctoral thesis by Marie Curie.
The discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895 aroused great interest in the scientific community and gave rise to numerous research activities. On the other hand, the Becquerel rays, discovered by Henri Becquerel, have not yet aroused such enthusiasm. Marie Curie, who was then looking for a subject for her doctoral thesis, chose to devote herself to the study of this radiation. In 1897, she began her thesis work on the study of radiation produced by uranium, at that time still called uranium rays because they were believed to be specific to this element9 until she discovered the radioactivity of thorium, shortly after Gerhard Carl Schmidt10. She endeavors to quantify the ionizing capacities of uranium salts, in a rudimentary workshop made available to her by the director of Education and Research.
Marie Curie and Henri Poincaré at the first Solvay Congress in 1911.
Plaque at the entrance to the physics amphitheater of the Sorbonne (nowadays Lefebvre amphitheater).
Following the award of the Nobel Prize, Pierre Curie was appointed in October 1904 as professor holding a new chair of physics at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Paris and obtained the construction of a laboratory in the courtyard of the faculty annex dedicated to the PCN certificate located at 12 rue Cuvier. In November 1904, Marie Curie obtained the position of project manager of the chair with an annual salary of 2,400 francs.
On April 19, 1906, Pierre died, accidentally run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Marie Curie suffered lastingly from this loss and was supported in the difficult years that followed by Pierre's father, Eugène Curie, and by her brother Jacques Curie. She then became the first woman in France to direct a university laboratory20. From 1906 to 1934, it welcomed 45 women without exercising sexist selection in its recruitment21. She moved in 1907 to rue du chemin de fer in Sceaux in order to be closer to the place where her husband was buried.
Marie Curie was given the course on May 1, 1906, replacing Pierre, becoming the first woman professor at the Sorbonne22. His inaugural lesson took place on November 5, 190623 in the physics amphitheater of the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne, where journalists, artists, political figures and women of the world crowded together. The Journal greeted the event in these terms17:
“it is […] a great feminist victory that we are celebrating on this day. For, if women are allowed to give higher education to students of both sexes, where will the supposed superiority of the male man be? Truly I tell you, the time is near when women will become human beings. »
She was appointed full professor of the chair on November 16, 1908. The title of the chair then became general physics and radioactivity.
In 1910, assisted by Professor André-Louis Debierne, Marie Curie managed to isolate one gram of radium in the form of pure metal. The same year she published the treatise on radioactivity. Anticlericals, Dreyfusards and freethinkers refusing the systematic election of anti-Dreyfusard candidates at the Institut de France24 advised him to apply to the Academy of Sciences, but it was Édouard Branly who was elected, with a majority of two votes, presumably due to both anti-feminist and xenophobic conservatism17.
At the beginning of November 1911, she participated in the first Solvay Congress, organized and financed by the Belgian chemist and industrialist Ernest Solvay. This congress brings together many physicists, such as Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford. She is the only woman at this congress and almost the only one for the following ones (for example, there is the Austrian Lise Meitner).
The diploma accompanying Marie Sklodowsk's 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry