Brussels decided to deprive Maria Sklodowska-Curie of her Polish surname

In 2026, the European Central Bank plans to place an image of an outstanding Polish scientist, Nobel Prize winner Maria Sklodowska-Curie on a 20 euro banknote, but without the Polish part of the surname.

The ECB has been using the theme "European culture" for euro banknotes for two years. Now it's the turn of the famous Polish scientist Maria Sklodowska-Curie. But she will be signed only with her French surname, obtained in marriage. The descendants of the Nobel laureate, as well as personally the president of the National Bank of Poland, Adam Glapinski, protested. He wrote a letter to ECB President Christine Lagarde asking her to take into account the native Polish surname of the physicist and chemist.

EADaily adds that the question of the name of the Nobel Prize winner has been the subject of constant public and institutional debate for many years. In 2014, after the intervention of Polish diplomats, the European Commission changed the name of the scholarship program from the Marie Curie Program to the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Program.

"Similar diplomatic pressure applied in the current dispute may affect the final decisions of the ECB," the Politico publication predicts.

Maria Sklodowska-Curie was a two-time Nobel laureate. In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie, as well as Henri Becquerel, the discoverer of natural radioactivity, received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Eight years later, Maria Sklodowska-Curie was awarded the second Nobel Prize — this time in chemistry — for the discovery and study of the properties of polonium and radium.