2 Euros Simone Veil

Simone Veil was elected to the Académie française in 2008, but it is her 1975 legislation — passed through a hostile, predominantly male National Assembly in a speech she later described as the most grueling of her life — that defines her public memory. The law legalizing abortion in France bore her name from the start, though it was not formally titled the "loi Veil" in official statute until decades later.

She died in June 2017, and her entry into the Panthéon the following year — alongside her husband Antoine — was only the fifth time a woman had received that honor.