Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s granddaughter, Professor Hélène Langevin-Joliot, received an honorary doctorate degree awarded 100 years ago to the discoverer of polonium and radium by the then University of Poznan. The ceremony took place in the Lubrański Hall of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
“I am moved by this ceremony and by everything I have heard here about Maria, about this long history and the many tasks she had done. It has been said that she was an extremely modest person. And that is true perhaps, but she was also a very conscious person, she was a person for whom it was extremely important to respect others. And perhaps that was also expression of her modesty”, says Prof Langevin-Joliot.
The university’s Senate awarded an honorary doctorate to Marie Skłodowska-Curie in 1922, but she never received it. According to the memoirs of the then dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Adam Wrzosek, the diploma was not printed, nor was the promotion ceremony held.
