The Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum is located in the house where she was born in 1867. The idea of establishing a biographical museum in Warsaw dedicated to Maria Skłodowska-Curie arose before World War II. At that time, it was planned to open a “Museum of Maria Skłodowska-Curie Memorabilia” at the Radium Institute in Warsaw, located at 15 Wawelska Street, based on collections gathered by the scientist’s sisters, Bronisława Dłuska and Helena Skłodowska-Szalay.
These collections included, among other items, the scientist’s correspondence, family photographs, and documents, notebooks filled with her poetry, translations, and drawings, notes from Adam Mahrburg’s lectures on psychology and ethics, as well as diaries belonging to her father, Władysław, and her brother, Józef. The collection also featured portraits and a necklace owned by the Nobel laureate.
In 1951, Maria’s older daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, herself a Nobel laureate, donated additional invaluable items to the National Museum in Warsaw, intending to make these artifacts accessible to the public. This donation included instruments from Maria and Pierre Curie’s laboratory, her correspondence with Polish scientists, documents, photographs, scientific papers, and personal items. The Ministry of Culture and Art was responsible for preserving these items at the National Museum. Subsequent efforts to establish a museum befitting Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s legacy were led by the Polish Chemical Society (PCS), of which she had been an honorary member since 1924. Notably, Józef Hurwic, then President of PCS, and Alicja Dorabialska, a physical chemist and former scholar in Maria Curie’s laboratory at the Radium Institute in Paris, played significant roles in this endeavor.
On October 16, 1967, the centenary of her birth, the PCS inaugurated the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum at 16 Freta Street in Warsaw.
