Marie Curie Joins ‘Great Men’ Of France In The Pantheon Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist And Husband, To Be Entombed Together

Marie Curie, who won two Nobel Prizes but battled discrimination in the male-dominated scientific community, was installed with her husband, Pierre, in the Pantheon Thursday, becoming the first woman, on her own merit, to be entombed with the “great men” of the French republic.

To the elegiac music of violins, the Curies’ simple oak caskets were carried on the shoulders of young science students down a long, white carpet to the steps of the nation’s most sanctified final resting place.

Pierre and Marie Curie, known for their pioneering work in radioactivity at the turn of the 20th century, were the 70th and 71st French luminaries to pass through the imposing columns of the Pantheon, beneath the inscription that still reads: “To the Great Men, a Grateful Nation.”

President Francois Mitterrand praised the scientific accomplishments of the Curies in an emotional speech on the cold spring evening, addressing a crowd of about 1,000 that included 91-year-old Eve Curie, the couple’s lone surviving daughter.

The president, who decided last year to transfer Madame Curie’s remains to the Pantheon, praised “the exemplary battle of one woman who decided to fight in a society dominated by men.”

“My hope is that equal rights for men and women will progress everywhere in the world,” Mitterrand added, “because I find undignified, in a civilized society, the preference given to men for the last 30 centuries.”

Also on hand for the ceremony, the first of its kind in six years, were Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac and Lech Walesa, president of Poland. Marie Curie was born to the impoverished Sklodowska family in Warsaw in 1867 and worked as a teacher and governess before moving to Paris to join her sister.

The two caskets were ushered into the rotunda, where they will lie in state beneath the grand dome until Saturday, when they will be entombed in crypt No. 8.The only other woman buried in the Pantheon, Sophie Berthelot, was allowed to be interred there to join her husband, chemist Marcelin Berthelot.

Marie and Pierre Curie were two of history’s most famous scientists, doing work that would later help modern scientists understand the atom and its potential power.

Before they met, in 1894, Pierre Curie already had distinguished himself in the study of crystals and their electrical potential. He later joined his wife’s work, and together they discovered radium and polonium.

They shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics, with Henri Becquerel.