50 Euros Institut Curie

The Institut Curie was founded in 1909 through the merger of the Curie Laboratory at the Sorbonne and the Pasteur Institute's cancer research unit, making 2009 its centenary year — the direct occasion for this issue. Marie Curie herself had resisted the institutionalization of her laboratory for years, wary of bureaucratic interference with research. She relented only under pressure from colleagues who recognized that cancer radiotherapy required infrastructure no single scientist could sustain alone.

The institute pioneered the use of radon "seeds" in tumor treatment during the 1920s, a technique Curie's team developed directly from her isolation of radium.