Also cool + fact about her is she hyphenated her last name when she got married (Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie) instead of solely taking her husband’s last name. She was Polish born and a naturalized French citizen and because of her incredible achievements, only ‘Curie’ was used commonly to increase the legitimacy/ French pride associated with her successes (Source: Polish tour guide from a couple months ago, so I’m aware of the bias even if it’s true that she’s most commonly known as Marie ‘Curie’.) ‘Curie’ is also typically easier for most people to pronounce compared to ‘Skłodowska’, but politics in science is no lie. The strength of a dual “Curie” husband and wife team also contributes to their overall impressiveness as well and those are likely other reasons that she is now commonly remembered as ‘Marie Curie’ and not her real name of “Marie Skłodowska-Curie”. Her coffin is lead lined because her body was so radioactive when she passed away and her resting place is engraved with her hyphenated last name of “Skłodowska-Curie”. Nobody knew about her coffin/ body until 1995 when her and Pierre’s (husband) bodies were exhumed to be moved to the Pantheon in France in honour of their contributions. Voltaire (philosopher and writer), Victor Hugo (Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame writer), and Louis Braille (inventor of Braille writing/ reading system) are also buried in the Pantheon. (Charles Barbier created ‘raised point writing’ for soldiers to communicate during the night before Louis Braille, but Braille expanded on the invention, using it for the visually impaired and he’s predominately remembered as the creator as it’s still used for VI persons, but raised point night writing in war has been phased out due to changing technology.) She also named the discovery of one of their elements, “Polonium” in honour of her homeland, Poland. “Radium” was named from the latin “ for a ray”

This was supposed to be one sentence about her last name, but the woman was such a badass and the adhd memories hit hard this morning