Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Warsaw

Maria Skłodowska-Curie appears here as a bronze monument in Skłodowska-Curie Park, beside the oncology institute in Ochota. Ludwika Nitschowa created it, and Warsaw unveiled it on the fifth of September nineteen thirty-five. The sculptor makes the scientist seem caught in thought and motion: she walks with her face lowered, her chin supported by a bent hand.

The pose suits a physicist and chemist whose work opened new ground in the study of radioactivity. She became the first woman awarded a Nobel Prize, and remains the first person to receive the prize twice. Her research identified radium and polonium, linking this quiet park to discoveries that reshaped modern science.

A tree close by has an especially personal connection: Skłodowska-Curie planted it herself in nineteen thirty-two. The statue’s surface also preserves Warsaw’s wartime memory. During the Warsaw Uprising, RONA soldiers fired at the monument for target practice, leaving marks on its arm, back, and chest. Conservation followed in nineteen ninety-seven, but those bullet scars were deliberately kept, so the memorial carries both the scientist’s achievement and the city’s ordeal.