50 Euro Cents Marie Curie

Marie Curie remains the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two separate sciences — Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. She was also the first woman to win the prize in any category. This issue is part of France's ongoing "Femmes de France" series, which began using the 50-cent module to honor women of historical distinction whose contributions were long underrepresented in official commemorative coinage.

Curie was Polish-born, a fact that generated some diplomatic friction when France claimed her fully as a national figure following her 1995 Panthéon interment — Poland has issued its own competing commemoratives.