500 Euros Institut Curie

Issued to mark the centenary of Marie Curie's 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — her second Nobel, in a different discipline from the first — this coin was struck in the same year France was renegotiating its relationship with scientific funding bodies. The Institut Curie, founded on Curie's own research infrastructure in Paris, remains an active oncology and research center, not a museum piece.

At 155.5 grams of .999 gold, Monnaie de Paris produced this in strictly limited numbers, as is standard for their grand format collector issues. The 1911 prize was awarded while Curie was simultaneously embroiled in a press scandal over her relationship with physicist Paul Langevin.