Marie Sklodowska Curie - Culture & History Event
One of the most significant (one of the bigest organized by this Club) events we sponsored in 2017 was the Celebration of the 150th Birthday Anniversary of Marie Sklodowska Curie. Why? To bring awareness to the general public that she, Marie Sklodowska Curie one of the greatest scientists of the world, was a daughter of Poland.
Marie Sklodowska Curie is the only woman awarded two Nobel prizes and accomplished this at a time when women were generally denied access to higher education. Her perseverance, hunger for knowledge, and endurance made this possible. After Sklodowska’s emigration to France, her private and scientific life became rooted in France, but she kept a strong connection with Poland. One of the radioactive elements she discovered (before her discovery of Radium) was named Polonium - to honor her native country. Marie Curie is one of only three scientists ever to win Nobel Prizes in two science disciplines, chemistry and physics, and the only woman to achieve that till today.
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Photography credit to Jen Myronuk.
150th Birthday Celebration Honoring Marie Sklodowska Curie
Tucson, Arizona - 2017
Epilogue
by Alicja Mann
The Arizona Polish Club was proud to support and host the 150th Birthday Anniversary Celebration of Marie Sklodowska Curie. Our goal was to bring awareness to the general public that she, one of the greatest scientists and humanists of the world, was a daughter of Poland.
Marie Sklodowska Curie is the only woman awarded two Nobel prizes and accomplished this at a time when women were generally denied access to higher education. Her hunger for knowledge and perseverance made this possible.
Sklodowska’s life story has been an inspiration to many women of the world and it should be even more so today. In the words of Robert Reid, one of her biographer ”As a woman scientist she was liberated because she had created the conditions for her own liberation. She had tackled her profession’s problems as an equal to all the rest involved: and all the rest happen to be men.”
Susan Marie Frontczak, a storywrier and performer, was an excellent choice to be a central part of our celebration. Her evening performance on of 7th of November (the exact birth date of MSC) was superb in front of an audience of about 400 in Crowder Hall of the University of Arizona - an appropriate environment to celebrate this great scientist.
Frontczak took us more than 100years back in time to Warsaw and Paris first as being Maria Sklodowska and later as Marie Curie. She totally captivated the audience with her physique excellently resembling the heroine, mesmerized us with her quiet, yet emotional, words in slight Polish accent and kept us “glued” to the seats for the entire time of the performance.
Thanks to Susan Marie Frontczak, some of that audience learned, perhaps for the first time about the dramatic history of Poland and a very complex life of Marie Sklodowska Curie. Some were reminded that after Sklodowska’s emigration to France, her private and scientific life became rooted in France, but she kept a strong connection with Poland. One of the radioactive elements she discovered (before her discovery of Radium) was named Polonium - to honor her native country.