Talk:Marie Curie

Description at top doesn't match Nobel Prizes section

The description at the top of the page says Curie was "the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields" but later in the Nobel Prizes section it says "She was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes, and remains alone with Linus Pauling as Nobel laureates in two fields each." Tmhacker (talk) 01:55, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

The passage is correct: Linus Pauling won for chemistry in 1954, and for peace in 1962. Remsense ‥ 论 01:58, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Just to clarify, "peace" is not a "scientific field". Thus, Curie is still "the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:14, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect spouse birth date (typo)

I noticed a small typo. The article states under ‘spouse’: Spouse Pierre Curie (m. 1895; died 1906)

-> 1895 should be 1859 89.205.176.243 (talk) 07:50, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

The "m." means "married". Hqb (talk) 16:48, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

École normale supérieure?

The article states that "Curie became the first woman faculty member at the École Normale Supérieure", but the cited source, page 176 of Marie Curie: A Life, has "École Normale Supérieure at Sèvres, France's best preparatory school for women teachers". I think this might be a different school. It's mentioned here. 2001:B011:13:3869:602E:DA29:E0C7:A3C3 (talk) 06:37, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

To clarify, Quinn does state that Curie became the first woman faculty member, but not at the École normale supérieure (Paris). It was the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles, a school for girls. The biography by Ève Curie also states that it was a school for girls located at Sèvres. I think this should be clarified in the article. 2001:B011:13:3869:565:99B:4E57:383A (talk) 02:49, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 July 2025

Please change "In 1900, Curie became the first woman faculty member at the École Normale Supérieure" to "In 1900, Curie became the first woman faculty member at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles". This is what is stated in the cited source. See the discussion I started above. 2001:B011:13:BDF2:9085:38CA:22A2:4A0C (talk) 03:50, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

 Done. UmbyUmbreon (talk) 07:30, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 July 2025

Change the title of the page from "Marie Curie" to "Marie Sklodowska-Curie". Reason: historical accuracy, correlation with other pages. 213.184.238.202 (talk) 06:39, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Marie Skłodowska-Curie*

upd:: wrong letter 213.184.238.202 (talk) 06:46, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: page move requests should be made at Wikipedia:Requested moves. UmbyUmbreon (talk) 07:38, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

 Note: Even then, a similar move was made back in 2024 and was reverted, as we use common names for article titles. UmbyUmbreon (talk) 07:41, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Error in her spouse's birth date

(New to leaving wikipedia corrections so sorry if im doing something wrong) The 9 and 5 in her spouse's lifespan are round the wrong way in the summary block, it had me thinking for a moment it was some weird arranged marriage thing and he died at the age of 10 2A00:23C8:8A26:9801:F59A:239C:1124:37B3 (talk) 10:44, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

The "m." means "married"; it's not Pierre's birth date. Hqb (talk) 16:33, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 3 August 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. WP:SNOW—moreover, we should not go out of our way to indulge these invocations of bureaucratic processes, when coming from a source so totally unwilling to engage with our policies, guidelines, and consensuses in good faith. Almost more importantly than anything else, Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and we shouldn't let users unwilling to take a clear "no" for an answer force us to act like we are. (closed by non-admin page mover) Remsense 🌈 论 21:00, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

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Marie Curie → Maria Skłodowska CurieMaria Skłodowska Curie – Per self-identification, including the signature here in the infobox. As in for example Gloria Jean Watkins whom the English Wikipedia calls bell hooks (all minorcase) because she chose to call herself. 94.246.147.217 (talk) 00:54, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Even the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Monument (Lublin) here is being falsified into "Marie Curie Monument in Lublin" in an illustration caption.

The article about the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medal is called a "Marie Curie Medal" somehow. (The names of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are not falsified.)

94.246.147.217 (talk) 01:00, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Sources overwhelmingly refer to her as Marie Curie. O.N.R. ^(talk) 07:06, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. In English, the subject is almost universally referred to as "Marie Curie"; as well as being the WP:COMMONNAME it's more WP:CONCISE than the alternative. We call bell hooks by that name because that's the name by which reliable sources commonly refer to her. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:58, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
• Support per self-identification and against Western Eurocentrism

PahlaviFan (talk) 02:36, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

This is not true at all. Just look at references used by Wikipedia, who use normal capitalization (while Wikipedia goes out of way to never capitalize her pseudonym, including even somehow starting sentences with a minorcase b):

• Knight, Lucy (December 15, 2021). "Bell Hooks, author and activist, dies aged 69". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 15, 2021. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
• Tikkanen, Amy (November 27, 2019). "Bell Hooks | American scholar". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Stanford University. Retrieved March 31, 2022.
• Hsu, Hua (December 15, 2021). "The Revolutionary Writing of Bell Hooks". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on December 16, 2021. Retrieved December 16, 2021.
• "Get to Know Bell Hooks". The Bell Hooks center. Archived from the original on December 15, 2021. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
• "About the Bell Hooks institute". Bell Hooks institute. Archived from the original on January 8, 2021. Retrieved December 17, 2021., via archive.org

These are not cherry picked, just the ones from the top (bell hooks#References).

The first reference cites "But the Chicago Manual says it is not all right to capitalize the name of the writer bell hooks because she insists that it be lower case."

Maria Skłodowska Curie did insist to be called Maria Skłodowska Curie. Yes, it was in fact very important for her to known by this name.

94.246.147.217 (talk) 13:28, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Common name concerns as above. ⇌ Synpath 12:46, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. As above, it's the English language WP:COMMONNAME; her full name is given in the lead sentence. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:49, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. 162 etc. (talk) 04:24, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• Comment what a shame the people here aren't progressive about this at all. This isn't even dead-naming, it's worse than that.PahlaviFan (talk) 06:51, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. In English language sources "Marie Curie" is still 10 times more common than "Marie Skłodowska-Curie" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Marie+Sk%C5%82odowska-Curie%2C+Marie+Curie&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3. However, usage seems to be changing in favour of the latter, a decade ago the ratio was 50. It is plausible we will see parity in the next decade. At which point we probably should rename this article.TR 08:42, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per above, WP:COMMONNAME (plus MOS:FULLNAME to some extent). Under MOS:IDENTITY, common use is still prioritised not self-identification, unless recent sources have mostly switched or there is no common name. Neither proven by the nom, while Ngrams above still backs the current. DankJae 20:57, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I'll attach a postscript to this, since I feel I'll need to. The only salient argument for the move is the perceived and assumed restrospective preference of the subject. Despite attempting oblique analogies to bell hooks above, this singular motivation becomes obvious upon the OP's Maria Skłodowska Curie did insist to be called Maria Skłodowska Curie. Yes, it was in fact very important for her to known by this name.

Every other argument offered is transparently pretextual, and just doesn't apply. The comparison might be vaguely apt if bell hooks preferred to go by bell jean watkins—but actually no, since the comparison remains pretextual, not substantial. No other historical biography on the encyclopedia is treated this way, where one's specific preferred form of their name is preferred over their English-language common name because they preferred it. It was important to her to be known by this name, but it's not our fault that she is not known by this name as of present. It is straightforwardly absurd we should see our duty as being explicitly to lead, not to follow in this one instance.

The deadnaming analogy is even more transparent, since instead of comparing a comparatively recently deceased biography with comparatively novel orthographic nuance (bell hooks) with one comparatively conventional and belonging to posterity (Skłodowska Curie)—we're going to pretend the personal dignity of a class of generally living folk (and! one also generally reflected in COMMONNAME!) is the same thing.

Response to an argument by a sock.Remsense 🌈 论 00:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

If Maria were here, she could and should demand media sources use her preferred name. She's not, and this encyclopedia is not written for her, it's for our readers trying to find and learn something about one of the most important women in modern history. They can't find out how proud she was of her Polishness and her Polish name if they can't find the article about her. That's the point of the guideline, and there's no argument that's even been suggested to exist that would offset the clear pragmatic reasons we treat her like we do everyone else. Remsense 🌈 论 23:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

"if they can't find the article about her" how is this an issue? just set up a redirect. I'm confident not even one single person less would be able to reach this article no matter what the name ends up being. wojtekpolska^{₁₀₁₃ [talk page]} 14:53, 7 August 2025 (UTC)