The attacks stop after Maria receives her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry. During her acceptance speech, she emphasises that her discoveries were made together with her husband, and therefore she accepts the prize in honour of Pierre’s memory. One year later, Maria Skłodowska-Curie initiates the construction of the Radium Institute in Paris.
During World War I, she organises the radiology service for army hospitals. She actively participates in the installation of the facilities together with her daughter Irène (who will later become a chemist and the second, after her mother, female recipient of the Nobel Prize in science)
Maria Skłodowska-Curie maintains a close relationship with her home country: Polish academics receive scholarships to work at the Laboratoire Curie in Paris. The Warsaw Scientific Society appoints her the head of the Mirosław Kernbaum Radiological Laboratory, albeit remotely. In 1932, Maria Skłodowska-Curie establishes the Radium Institute in Warsaw and donates 1 gram of radium she receives from her donors.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie dies on 4th July 1934 at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in the French Alps. She dies of severe anaemia caused by prolonged exposure to radiation, and is buried in the Curie family grave in Sceaux near Paris. In 1995, the remains of Maria and Pierre Curie will be enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris.
After she passes away, Albert Einstein writes that Madame Curie was the only person he knew who was completely unspoiled by fame.
Translated by Agata Zano