Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bartoszcki 2120 days ago
Scared of non ASCII characters? ;) It's Maria Skłodowska-Curie
3 comments

Her signature was apparently more often than not M. Curie.

https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubor:Marie_Curie_signature.s...

The nobel prize of 1903 refers to her as "Marie Curie, née Sklodowska", meaning that Sklodowska is her maid name but not her name after marriage in French.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/summary/

Yes, it means it's her maiden name, but née just translates as born. It was her birth name.
Yeah, and it's typically how it is said in French: it refers to your name at birth, which is not current anymore.
This is kinda of sad, because wikipedia has her page titled as Marie Curie too. It is a bit ironic imo, because poles are very proud of her and yet at the time the country failed her, by not giving the possibility of attending university.
> the country failed her, by not giving the possibility of attending university

The country didn't exist at the time, being partitioned between Prussia, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Poles didn't have much to say about the university admission policies of the Russian Empire, where she lived. She did, however, attend the so called Flying University [1], which was a higher education institution organized by Polish underground resistance.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_University

You're obviously right, forgot that I have to check if my country existed in a given time.
Seems like wikipedia decided that they preferred to use the name she is most commonly known by in english sources. I found an old discussion about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Marie_Curie/Archive_2#Req...
In history and pop-culture she's known as Marie Curie.

Heck, she event has a SI unit named after her, the Curie.

1. Wikipedia states: "according to a notice in Nature at the time, it was named in honour of Pierre Curie, but was considered at least by some to be in honour of Marie Curie as well."

2. The Curie isn't an SI unit, the Becquerel (Bq) is.

Time to change that, then. She insisted on using both surnames and strongly emphasized her Polish roots throughout her life. Erasing her Polish maiden name clashes with her wishes and is only possible, because due to historical circumstances Poland had very limited impact on global popular culture.
>strongly emphasized her Polish roots throughout her life

and named the first element she discovered - Polonium - after her homeland.

And in Russian space she is Мария Склодовская-Кюри (Maria Skłodowska-Curie) too (that was on her portrait in our chemistry class back in 198x for example).

Not in polish history nor pop culture. Given that she insisted on using both it is kind of disrespectful to her.