Celebrating Madame Curie in Warsaw
The ‘Marie Sklodowska-Curie Symposium on the Foundations of Physical Chemistry’ was held at the Copernicus Center in Warsaw, the birth town of Marie Sklodowska-Curie, on 18-19 November this year. The event was held in celebration of this extraordinary scientist, on the occasion of the International Year of Chemistry and the Polish Presidency of the European Union Council.
The symposium, which featured many distinguished chemists and physicists – including Nobel laureates Gerahrd Ertl and Claude Cohen Tannoudji – was organized by a number of prestigious French, German and Polish institutions and was sponsored by the European Physical Society.
The participation of young people was encouraged at the event, with the presentation of posters. As usual, the best posters were awarded prizes – with the authors invited to give brief presentations at the end of the symposium – and this turned out to be a very nice initiative, coming from the scientific organizers Michael Giersing, Maciej Kolwas and Ludger Wöste.
The conclusion of the symposium was very touching, with a performance of Kaziemierz Braun’s play ‘Radiation – The Story of Maria Skłodowska-Curie’, presented in the original Polish by the Theatre, Poetry and Music Salon of Toronto. This was an exquisite example of how culture and science can be merged.
