Madame Curie

I wrote: "Saint Geneviève (420-512), the patron saint of Paris,  ...  was honored in the 18th century with a huge church, which the secular government took over and renamed the Pantheon. It is the burial place for "all the gods",and dedicated to the great men by the grateful fatherland, What male chauvinism! The building is still decorated with paintings telling the life of Sainte Geneviève, but whether her bones survived the revolutionary turmoil I do not know. Madame Curie is buried there (an honorary man). She might not feel comfortable surrounded by all those anticlerical men-"

Ed Jajko coments: "Madame Curie is not only an honorary man but also an honorary, or at most a naturalized, Frenchwoman.  She was born Maria Sklodowska, in then Russian-occupied Warsaw, in 1867, and moved to Paris in 1891.  She won two Nobel prizes, in physics and chemistry.  She is a justifiably important figure to Poles.  A museum in her honor is maintained in the house she was born in in Warsaw.  My Polish-American parents and family revered her name, always emphasizing that she was Maria Sklodowska-Curie.  They perhaps did not know that Mme Curie may feel quite comfortable among "all those anticlerical men."  Pierre Curie practiced no religion, and Maria Sklodowska abandoned her Catholic faith by the time she reached 20".  RH: It would be interesting to know why she abandoned her faith before she left Poland. Anticlericalism in France has a long history (François Villon was anticlerical), but how old is anticlericalism in once devout very Poland?

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