Talk:Marie Curie/Archive 4

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"was a Polish physicist and chemist"?

The intro of this article seems to me quite biased towards preserving the pride of Polish nationalism. There is a full paragraph about how she "never lost her sense of Polish identity". While this information is probably worth mentioning, I don't think it is important enough to be mentioned in the introduction. This is not what she is known for, and the fact she was teaching Polish to her children cannot be put on equal footing with her scientific achievement.

Also, the first sentence describing her as "Polish working mainly in France" is, I think, misleading. It is not only that she did her scientific work in France. She married a Frenchman with whom she had children, had French citizenship, spent most of her life in France, died in France and was buried in France. Her descendants are also French living in France. Trying to imply that she only had a professional link with France is misrepresenting her life. Furthermore this is inconsistent with most other wikipedia entries of people having several nationalities. For example, John Von Neumann is described as "Hungarian-born American mathematician", even though he was living in Hungary until at least 22. Similarly, Benoit Mandelbrodt is a "Polish-born French and American mathematician". So the convention seem to be "BirthNationality-born CountryLivedInAndNationalityObtainedWhenDoingWork Qualifier". That would translate as "Polish-born French physicist". Since some people above seem to have issues with this, an alternative could be "Polish and French physicist" or "Polish-born French-naturalized physicist". But in any case I do think "Polish working mainly in France" is very misleading and should be changed. 130.54.130.234 (talk) 04:01, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

There is definitely something wrong in the phrasing of the first sentence.

First it is inconsistent with other biographical entries. I saw the comparison above with Albert Einstein and Walter Kohn being dismissed on the basis of a difference of age at the time of moving (17 vs 24). Where exactly did you found the wikipedia rule saying that this makes any difference (and what would be the precise age limit that separates one case for the other?) Or did you just made that up?

But these entries are not the only one relevants anyway. John von Neumann moved to USA at age 27 and is "Hungarian-born American scientist". Nikola Tesla moved to USA at age 28 and is "Serbian-born American physicist". The list could grow quite long. In non-scientific biography, the rule is usually the same: you can find that Arnold Schwarzenegger is an "Australian-born American actor", while Josephine Baker is an " American-born French dancer". Generally speaking, all this examples tend to use the country of residence and nationality at the time of the notable work of the person.

Further, in WP:MOSBIO, section "Opening Paragraph", you can find the following recommendations: "Context (location, nationality, or ethnicity)" should be "for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable". Furthermore, it is explictly written: "Ethnicity should not be emphasized in the opening" and "Similarly, previous nationalities or the country of birth should not be mentioned in the opening sentence". Marie Curie became notable for and during her work done in France, while she had French nationality, and France was at the time (and remained for her whole life) her country of permanent residency. All of these recommendations point to qualifying Marie Curie as "French physicist" and not "Polish physicist".

Therefore I see strictly no case for using "Polish physicist". Consistency with other biography alone is a strong enough motivation for changing back to "Polish-born French physicist". (Having read many other biographies of persons with similar life, the sentence "Polish physicist that worked mainly in France" gave me the impression she was never even given French nationality).Tokidokix (talk) 15:13, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I would like to add that this is not something about nationalistic pride (and it should not be). I would personally prefer it very much if Wikipedia policy was to forbid mentioning nationality/ethnicity of scientists in their introduction (as introduction should focus on their achievements and those have universal value). However, if nationality is going to be mentioned, it should be in a way that is neither misleading nor inconsistent with wikipedia entries/policies. Tokidokix (talk) 15:34, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Curie was Polish by birth and by strong association with the language and culture. She was French by marriage and by adult residence and research location. She never applied for French citizenship as it was not needed because of her marriage to a Frenchman. Binksternet (talk) 16:19, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

You are not addressing any of my issues. And further I don't see how anything you said would go against calling her "Polish-born French". Her association to Poland by birth is covered by the "Polish-born". It is a fact that she was French (as "having French nationality" is one of the most common meaning for the adjective "French", and she had french nationality). The specific way in which she got French nationality has no relevance into that (further, have you even documented proof that French nationality laws of that time was granting automatic French citizenship? Nowadays you certainly have a lot of paperwork to do to get the French nationality, even if you married a French national). Further the association of Marie Curie with France is certainly at least as strong as her association with Poland. France was the country in which she chose to live most of her life, the country in which her family was, the country which she supported in times of war, and the country in which she did all her notable work. She certainly could have, at several point of her life, chosen to return to Poland and finish her days there, but she chose not to. There is further no evidence that I know that she opposed being mentioned as French.

And anyway, I reiterate here: your edit is totally lacking of consistency with other Wikipedia article of people with similar biography, as well as not following WP:MOSBIO.

By the way, if anything WP:MOSBIO makes a much stronger case for mentioning her as French only without mentioning the Polish-part than the opposite: the context information in the opening should be the one relevant for the notable work of the person. She would not have done her work on radioactivity if she had not come to work with Bequerelle who had just discovered it. And she did her notable work in France, with French nationality, with French colleagues and husband. On the other hand, except for the fact of naming one element Polonium, I don't see any association between her notable work and Poland. So following strictly WP:MOSBIO would lead to "French Physicist" and not even "Polish-born French physicist" (but I am not even asking for that anyway). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tokidokix (talk • contribs) 23:58, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and finally: the online Encyclopaedia Britannica do mention her as "Polish-born French" in their introduction: http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/146871/Marie-Curie . It would seem to me that it is a pretty objective source (as in "established" and "neither French not Polish") Tokidokix (talk) 00:07, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

The question of nationality is not so cut-and-dried as you suggest. Kurt Gödel (1906-78) appears on Wikipedia as "an Austrian logician, mathematician, and philosopher," though he lived most of his life in the United States (from 1940), became a U.S. citizen in 1947, and did much of his important work there. Nihil novi (talk) 04:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is described in his Wikipedia lead simply as "a German-born theoretical physicist..." though he did his most memorable work as a Swiss citizen, lived his last 22 years in the United States, and died an American citizen. Nihil novi (talk) 04:29, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I will give you that wikipedia is not 100% self-consistent on these things. But the pattern I have described do seem to be applied most of the time. As for Godel, he did his most notable work (incompleteness theorem) while still in Austria, so this is not the same case anyway.

I see that, while not further discussing here, user Binksternet has changed the intro to "French Polish physicist". I would not have liked this to turn into an edit war, so I wanted to say that I appreciate that he tried to revert the page to a more consensual version. I am still slightly annoyed that this wording lacks consistency with other wikipedia entries/encyclopaedia, but at least I don't see it as a misrepresentation of the life of Marie Curie anymore. Since I'd rather not use too much of my (and other's) time for this, if "French Polish physicist" is considered acceptable by all, I will be content with this edit and stop the discussion here for my part. Tokidokix (talk) 04:00, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

• Susan Quinn writes in her Marie Curie: A Life (Da Capo Press, 1995, ISBN 0201887940) that Curie was Polish by birth and by culture. Nowhere in the book does she describe Curie as French. When Quinn encounters French claims that Curie was French (with her Polish heritage mentioned in passing if at all) Quinn points this out as hypocrisy (see page 192.)
• Eve Curie writes in her Madame Curie: A Biography (Da Capo Press, 2001, ISBN 0306810387 reprint) that, as a married woman Curie "retained the audacity and vehemence of a young Polish 'progressive'" (page 356.) Nowhere in the book does Eva say that Curie is French. Eva says Curie preferred to write and speak Polish, and that she was culturally Polish.
• Janice Borzendowski writes in Marie Curie: Mother of Modern Physics (Sterling, 2009, ISBN 1402765436) that Curie was remained very proud of her Polish heritage all her life. Nowhere in the book does she say Curie is French. Borzendowski emphasizes Curie's Polish cultural ties, and her naming of polonium for Poland.
• Barbara Goldsmith says in Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie (Norton, 2011, ISBN 0393079767) that Curie was filled with Polish patriotism. Never once does Goldsmith say that Curie is French.

I think the reason so many biographers dwell on the Polish culture of Curie is that she was so vehemently Polish in her life. If she had turned away from Poland and fully adopted French culture we would have a different story. Binksternet (talk) 04:08, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

These are excellent grounds for considering her Polish, and therefore a "Polish physicist and chemist". Her descendants, reared in France in French culture, may well consider themselves primarily French, but she herself was very much a Polish person living and working in France. Her sister Bronisława, for whom Maria built the Warsaw Radium Institute, berated Joseph Conrad, visiting Poland in 1914, for writing his novels in English rather than Polish. Nihil novi (talk) 04:41, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, but how is that even relevant to this discussion? We are not discussing the nationality of Marie Curie's sister here.Tokidokix (talk) 19:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I still think that you are getting the wrong idea about what should be the mention of nationalities in the introduction of a wikipedia article: it should be about objective facts like official nationality and residence, context of work etc. Feeling of nationalism are too subjective to evaluate anyway. But anyway, even if you want to consider feelings of nationalism, I still have to disagree with you. You seem to consider that her feeling Polish would be exclusive with her feeling French: still many people can have feeling of affection for both their country of origin and country of attachment. Also, a person feeling do not have to be the same through all of her life: Marie Curie was probably feeling mostly Polish during her first year in France, but she quite possibly was feeling more French than Polish 30 years later. So pointing at her being a Polish nationalist at some point of her life is not even a proof that she stayed in the same state of mind for all of her life. As for the biography quotes above, I am quite surprised with the statement by Binksternet that the biography Madame Curie by Marie Curie's own daughter do not refer to her as French. Either we do not have the same version of the book, or you did not really read it. Here are some quotes where she is called a Frenchwoman by her own daughter:

• About the choice of the name Polonium: "The choice of this name proves that in becoming a Frenchwoman and a physicist Marie had not disowned her former enthusiasms."
• "The Austrian government, which was the proprietor of the State factory there, decided to present a ton of residue to the two French "lunatics" who thought they needed it." (The 2 French lunatics are Marie and Pierre Curie)
• After the death of Pierre: "Gouy informed the dean of the faculty of their conviction: that Marie was the only French physicist capable of pursuing the work she and Pierre had undertaken"
• On her attitude during WWI: "Marie had only one thought: to serve her second fatherland."
• It is also said that while she wanted her daughters to know about Poland, she wanted them to be Frenchwomen: "And as she had not established the cult of the vanished scientist in her house, neither did she establish the cult of martyred Poland. She wished Irene and Eve to learn Polish, and for them to know and love her native land. But she deliberately made true Frenchwomen of them. Ah, let them never feel torn between two countries, or suffer in vain for a persecuted race! "
• It is also said she took great effort to master the French language as soon as possible and was trying not to sound Polish in French: "She had decided to learn the French language perfectly, as it was indispensable to her; and instead of cooing incorrect, sing-song sentences for years, as many Poles do, she learned her spelling and syntax with infallible sureness, and hounded down the very last traces of her accent. Only a very slight rolling of the "r" was to remain ever afterward as one of the graces of her rather muted voice, so sweet and charming. "

So you see that it is even explicitly said that Marie Curie was considering France to be her "fatherland" ("Patrie", in French).

Furthermore, the fact is that she chose to live in France until her death. That verifiable fact alone is enough to suppose she was feeling mostly French until proof of the contrary: a real Polish nationalist would have no doubt returned to Poland as soon as possible. So I believe this fact alone justify that the burden of proof on her not considering herself French is upon you. Please find a letter she would have wrote to a French newspaper saying "Please do not call me a French scientist, as I consider myself a Polish but not a French", for example. (But as the previous quotes show, she had no problem being called French)

So I stay by my initial position: I really see no case for not calling her a French physicist. (And again, I believe the correct version should be "Polish-born French physicist). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tokidokix (talk • contribs) 19:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

---

The examples above describing her as a Frenchwoman are not really valid:

• “becoming a Frenchwoman” doesn’t mean she became a Frenchwoman;
• referring to her collectively with Pierre as French is not surprising,
• “Marie was the only French physicist capable of pursuing the work she and Pierre had undertaken” – in the sense, “the only physicist in France...”
• “second fatherland” implies she was a foreigner, a Polish emigrant
• the fact that her daughters were French is not relevant here (although she taught them the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland)
• It’s not surprising she wanted to master the French language but, as you say, to the end she had a foreign Polish accent (the "r" sound)

All of the above made her a Polish emigrant working and living in France; she would normally be considered a member of the Polish minority in France, not French. Do you call all Poles (or other minorities) married to French citizens, "French"? Or only the successful ones? To me, it sounds very like French hypocrisy.

Furthermore, in an article, one finds: “Despite Curie's fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude tended toward xenophobia […] which also fueled false speculation that Curie was Jewish. During the French Academy of Sciences elections, she was vilified by the right-wing press, who criticised her for being a foreigner and an atheist. Her daughter later remarked on the public hypocrisy: the French press often portrayed Curie as an unworthy foreigner when she was nominated for a French honour, but would portray her as a French heroine when she received a foreign one, such as her Nobel Prizes.”

Another example of this attitude that can be found in the article: “Before the meeting [with the US President], recognising her growing fame abroad, and embarrassed by the fact that she had no French official distinctions to wear in public, the French government offered her the Legion of Honour, but she refused it.”

Finally, the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions fellowship program of the European Union for young scientists wishing to work in a foreign country is named after her (as she was a foreigner working in France).

I have found another objective source, a 2013 BBC documentary, "The Genius of Marie Curie" [1]

Throughout the film, there is not a single mention of her as a "Frenchwoman" or being "French", instead we find:

• “This foreign woman, who pushes a hesitant father of a family to destroy his home” - from Action française
• “Article in a newspaper accusing him [Paul Langevin] of hiding behind a Polish woman's skirts […] it was such an insult to his French dignity” – Dr Patricia Fara, University of Cambridge
• “a poor young woman from Poland”
• From a letter by Marie Sklodowska Curie: “It is a sorrow to me to have to stay forever in Paris”
• “It was not seen as a particularly fruitful research topic [Henri Becquerel’s research] which is probably why she as a Polish woman was enabled to pick it up because there wasn’t a lot of competition for it” - Dr Patricia Fara, University of Cambridge
• Her granddaughter: “It was a big problem [the affair with Paul Langevin] […] she was not only a Polish woman but a woman taking the husband in a family with four children”
• “For the [French] tabloids, the story of a famous female immigrant ruining the marriage of a prestigious Frenchman perfectly suited their nationalistic agenda.”
• The final sentence in the film: “At last, France had made it up to Marie Curie; this brave, brilliant Polish scientist, so truly shamed in life, had received her adopted country’s highest honour” when her body was moved to the Paris Panthéon – again, a Polish emigrant in France who was always seen as a foreigner.

As to the argument that she did not return to Poland:

She met Pierre thanks to a fellow Pole (Prof. Józef Wierusz-Kowalski), was homesick, missed her father and initially refused Pierre’s proposal of marriage. Pierre insisted and was ready to give up his scientific career and follow her to Poland, even if meant being reduced to teaching French. Your views on the matter show that you have no clue about the historic circumstances of many Poles living in exile during the 123-year-period of Poland's occupation by foreign powers: some of them were as Polish-nationalist as anyone could be (e.g., Mickiewicz, Chopin), and their émigré status only amplified their nationalism and their longing for a free country, in accord with the patriotic idea that "Poland is not yet lost so long as we still live". Poles living in exile in foreign countries during Poland's occupation preserved their Polish language and culture; becoming French would have meant betraying Poland, which Maria Skłodowska Curie never did. She remained a Polish nationalist to the end of her life; suggestions that she changed her attitude toward her native country are pure fantasy. That she stayed in France till her death does not prove she felt mostly French: at about age 40, she hired Polish governesses to teach her daughters her native language, and she sent or took them on visits to Poland – she did not feel less Polish. Poland regained independence when she was 51 (well settled in Paris), 16 years before her death, too late to return to Poland. Despite poor health, at age 58 she visited Poland to lay the foundations for another Radium Institute in Warsaw in free Poland. At age 62, she went on a second American tour in order to equip the Warsaw Radium Institute with radium. The Institute finally opened 2 years before her death, with her physician-sister Bronisława as its director. Furthermore, Maria was an active member of Polonia committees in France dedicated to the Polish cause, and she visited Poland just a few months before her death, so please don’t imply that, over the course of her life, she had lost her connections with Poland.

Poland is the country where she was born, raised and received her secondary and early higher education, the country where she did her first scientific work, the country where she had family, the country which she supported in its fight for independence, and the country which she never forgot. She was a Pole who married a Frenchman, a Pole who stayed in France till the end of her life, but still a Pole. Ethnicity is unchangeable, and she never said, "I don’t want to be Polish anymore"; on the contrary, she remained a Polish patriot to the end.

"Polish-born French" is unacceptable and narrows the meaning, as she was not only born in Poland. "French-Polish" is more appropriate, but I would say it is misleading as she was not of mixed descent – she was simply a Pole working and living in France. It’s true she was a Pole who married a Frenchman with whom she had children, a Pole who received French citizenship, a Pole who lived as an émigré in France, where she died and was buried – but she did all that as an ethnically Polish foreigner. “Polish scientist, working mainly in France” was more accurate and precise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.185.215.70 (talk) 16:13, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Persons with some understanding of Polish history, and of Maria Skłodowska Curie's history in particular, will appreciate the aptness of 79.185.215.70's comments above. Nihil novi (talk) 06:22, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Nihil novi, I noticed that you had a tendency to add a "praising comment" after a comment saying the thing you have been arguing for all along. This feel like borderline pupeetering to me, as it creates an illusion of people discussing and convincing each others when it is actually 3 or so like-minded persons discussing together. I do not want to offend you by this remark. But I just wanted to say it would be easier for me to assume good faith from you if you would avoid doing this. Also, possibly a bit off-topic, I note that you support the view of 79.185.215.70 that French-Polish imply French ancestry. It just so happens that I recently looked a bit at the Frederic Chopin talk page, and it *seems* (I did not bother to re-check, so please forgive me if I am wrong) to me that you were arguing there that on the contrary he should not be called French-Polish in spite of his father being French. This would not be very consistent then. In any case, I now expect you will support restoring the Frederic Chopin introductory sentence to French-Polish ;-).

Nihil novi, I am now really annoyed. Looking at the history of the talk page shows that you have been editing the reply of 79.185.215.70 (for example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AMarie_Curie&diff=569024781&oldid=568997979). Since you have then yourself written a "oh you are so right" comment about 79.185.215.70, and used the 79.185.215.70 comment that you edited yourself as a base for making a non-consensual edit, this now seems like blatant sock puppetry to me. (if you dont know this term, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry). Please know that I am now considering reporting your account for this. If you think I was mistaken in looking at the edits, feel free to explain to me below. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tokidokix (talk • contribs) 06:05, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

79.185.215.70, I could take the time to refute your "arguments" one after the other ('“becoming a Frenchwoman” doesn’t mean she became a Frenchwoman': what does that mean?; 'too late to return to Poland': why too late?, she was not that old; her supposed nationalism supposedly proved by her hiring a Polish governess? the quotes from her daughter I gave above show she would not even want her daughters to feel Polish; Poles of French nationality not being called French? by who?, etc...). BUT it does not even matter because you are again totally missing the point and not addressing the issue I raised. You are basically doing personal research (and personal research is bad) about the possible nationalistic feelings of Marie Curie. But this is about verifiable facts and wikipedia conventions. You insist a lot on her "Polish ethnicity", but in WP:OPENPARA, it is EXPLICITLY said that mention of ethnicity and country of birth SHOULD BE AVOIDED (except if it is relevant to her notability) in the introductory sentence. And it is also EXPLICITLY said that the country to be mentioned is "the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable". Marie Curie is notable for being a scientist, not for being polish. And she did all of her notable work in France, while having French nationality. So I argue again that strictly following WP:OPENPARA lead to emphasizing her French nationality over her Polish origins. Not to mention that mentioning her as "Polish working in France" is inconsistent with about every other Wikipedia biography of people with similar life/career. Tokidokix (talk) 05:02, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I said earlier I did not think it was worth my time to answer all of 79.185.215.70 points, but since this discussion is probably going to last for a long time, and since I have a bit of time today, I might as well answer a bit more here, for the sake of the archives.

First, I find your answers to my quotes very unconvincing (and do not forget that the points of these quotes was to expose the fact that Binksternet was not telling the truth when saying that no Marie Curie biography would qualify her as French, otherwise there would be even more relevant quotes, I think):

• '“becoming a Frenchwoman” doesn’t mean she became a Frenchwoman;' --> I think the sentence means exactly that, yes. How can you have a different interpretation?
• 'referring to her collectively with Pierre as French is not surprising,' -> No, if she was considerd Polish, it would have been written "a French and a Polish lunatic", or maybe a "a French lunatic and his Polish wife" or "a Polish lunatic and her French husband".
• '“Marie was the only French physicist capable of pursuing the work she and Pierre had undertaken” – in the sense, “the only physicist in France...”' --> no, in that case it would have been written "Marie was the only physicist in France"
• '“second fatherland” implies she was a foreigner, a Polish emigrant' --> again, nobody deny she was an immigrant from Poland. But surely somebody that consider France to be a fatherland to her can be called French, no?
• 'the fact that her daughters were French is not relevant here' -->it is relevant! Especially given that the French father had died early, there is no doubt that a really nationalistic Polish person would have tried to make her daughters feel like belonging to Poland.
• 'It’s not surprising she wanted to master the French language but, as you say, to the end she had a foreign Polish accent (the "r" sound)' --> I am not the one saying it. These were direct quotes from Eve Curie's book. The point here is that she made effort to be integrated in French society.
• 'Do you call all Poles (or other minorities) married to French citizens, "French"? Or only the successful ones? To me, it sounds very like French hypocrisy.' --> Yes, anybody having received the French nationality through marriage or other process has the right to be called French. Even if there will always be some people that will try to insist on their possible previous nationalities (whether with good or bad intention).

As for the attitude of French people toward her, there is no doubt that a part of the French population was (and still is now, but hopefully in lower proportion) xenophobic, mysoginistic, antisemitic (even if not a jew, the fact she was coming from Poland was making it easy to accuse her of being an undercover jew), conservative (see anger at the Langevin affair); not to mention ignorant of the scientific contributions of any scientist. That does not mean it was representing the attitude of all of French people, and frankly how could she have done the career she did if she had received such an overwhelming opposition in France? For example, in 1900 (before receiving any Nobel prize) she became the first woman (French-born or not) to be a faculty member of the Ecole Normale Superieur, the most prestigious school/university in France (and contrast this with the fact she would not even be accepted as a student at Warsaw university). And as much as one want to insist on the fact she lost her election to the French Academy of Science, she only lost by two votes, meaning there were still a large number of French scientist supporting her application (and it is quite likely that the one that rejected her for bad reasons were more annoyed by the fact she was a woman than the fact she was Polish-born). Another example is when members of the Pasteur institute also supported her in her creation of the Radium institute. So in the end, yes, she was criticized by some, but also supported by others. French government's attitude was probably quite opportunistic too (but politicians giving a late accolade to a great person they finally notice is not that uncommon, even for French-born people). But on the other hand, most of her research (before or after Nobel prize) were funded by the French government.

And frankly, using quotes from "Action francaise", the most horribly antisemitic and xenophobic far-right newspaper of the time is revealingly unfair. Calling all of the American population conservative bigots using a quote from Rush_Limbaugh would not even be as bad.

As for her supposed lifelong Polish nationalism, your arguments do not hold water for me. I am aware of the history of Poland (even if of course, I probably know it less than you). But it is very clear that after settling in France, she was not interested in going back to Poland. For example, in 1912, the Warsaw Scientific Society offered her the directorship of a new laboratory in Warsaw, but she refused, preferring developing the Radium Institute in France. When Poland was re-created, she was only about 50. And her husband was dead. Certainly nothing prevented her to spend her old days in Poland with her sister (which is what people that are really passionate about their country tend to do). She did not. This is a fact. And it is a meaningful fact. It does not mean that she had lost connection with Poland. But it does mean she was considering her life was now belonging in France.

Also, I would like to see a bit more details about her involvement in the Comittee for Poland. She was of course a member. But I have not heard of very "notable" contributions from her at these comittees. Which is surprising, if she was really that active and given her high international status. From the elements I have, she might as well have seen her participation at the comittee meetings as an occupation allowing her to meet other Polish-born friends.Tokidokix (talk) 05:40, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The Good Article version of this article can be seen here, representing the work which culminated in September 2012. It has a hidden note reading "Please do not change the nationality from Polish to French without consulting the discussion page. This formulation has been found to be the best way to reflect Curie's strong connections to both of these countries." The formulation referred to is "French-Polish", and was generally arrived at by User:Piotrus, User:Nihil novi and User:John leading up to the GA process. During the GA process overseen by User:TimothyRias, the formulation was not questioned or changed.
Previous discussions about this issue include French or Polish? from 2005, Nationality claims from 2005, Nationality from 2006, Is she Polish or French? from 2007, Polish-born French? from November 2010, Edit request from , 7 November 2011, Was a Polish-born , not Polish–French from November 2011, "was a Polish physicist and chemist" from February 2012, and Ethnicity/nationality from November 2012. Personally, I'm in favor of any formulation that emphasizes Curie's Polish birth, as she was proud of her Polish heritage all her life. The one formulation I cannot agree with is simply "[["French", delivered without clarification. Binksternet (talk) 23:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Your link to the GA discussion only lead to a history diff of the main article, so I could not check it. In any case, I already said that, while I think "Polish-born French" is the way that follows Wikipedia and other encyclopaediae conventions best, I am not passionate enough to start a war over this. So I am fine if there is a GA version stating "French-Polish". But then why has someone reverted this to "Polish working mainly in France"? I will revert again to the GA version then.

Also, I think it is you that moved this discussion down the talk page. Why? Especially, this discussion is much more active than the one that has now been put at the top and that discuss similar issuesTokidokix (talk) 05:02, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

The bottom of the talk page is where new discussions go. I support any version of Polish or Polish-French or French-Polish that editors can agree on. I cannot support "French" alone, or even Polish-born French which is what you are suggesting. Marie Curie never embraced France as her own country. She pointedly kept her Polish cultural heritage intact. Binksternet (talk) 05:42, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

The fact that new topic would go at bottom of pages is certainly not true of most talk pages I have seen on wikipedia. As for French-Polish, I already said I was personally fine with that, but that Wikipedia conventions favor "Polish-born French" (again, Polish-born French is not implying she was not feeling Polish). In any case, as I also said previously, if you are fine with French-Polish and it is the previously GA version, I think I would rather settle with that than use countless hours to get through a GA process :-) Tokidokix (talk) 06:16, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Binksternet, why do you write you support the "French-Polish" version and then change the article to "Polish"? Tokidokix (talk) 08:21, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Binksternet, I do not want to start an edit war, but then at least discuss here why you now will accept only the version "Polish working mainly in France". You said in your revert that even if you agree with "French-Polish", you are taking into account another editor viewpoint. In that case, why not take into account mine as well. I thought it was at least consensual that until an agreement can be reached, using the Good Article version was the better compromise. And I am still waiting for anyone to address my issues here. All that I have seen here is some hardly-backed opinions about how somebody think she supposedly had strong nationalistic feelings all of her life. But these are just opinions. It is my opinion that she wasn't feeling much Polish nationalism after having settled to France (and I have backed these opinions with what I believe to be strong points). But in the end this should not be a battle of opinion. People that support "Polish working mainly in France" HAVE to explain why they think it is necessary to disregard Wikipedia guidelines in this case. And also why they consider it necessary to not follow an established encyclopedia like Encyclopaedia Britanica (which uses "Polish-born French physicist"). As a sign of good faith, I have not and will not try to edit into "Polish-born French physicist" until a consensus can be reached. But until someone can make STRONG and valid points about at least the two issues I just mentioned, I do not accept that the article is left in a state different than the Good Article version.Tokidokix (talk) 02:52, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I believe you are not getting much respect here because you fail to see that reliable sources tell us that Marie Curie was very strongly nationalistic for Poland all her life, no matter that she married a Frenchman and lived in France. All the standard biographies describe her as emphatically Polish in her cultural practices. She taught her daughter the Polish language and Polish customs, and she followed Polish customs herself. Biographer Susan Quinn writes about how Curie was thrilled to be back in Poland in 1921 for the purpose of starting a radium institute in Warsaw, and Curie took the opportunity to involve herself in the "new struggle" to preserve the old Polish heritage. (See Quinn's Marie Curie: A Life, page 421.) The way you dismiss this kind of description as "opinion" is revealing. Binksternet (talk) 03:32, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

No, all standard biographies do not describe her as emphatically Polish. You have already tried to lied about this some comments up. You said she was never mentioned as French in the biography by her daughter, "Madame Curie", and I provided you with several quotes showing this was not true. I cannot check the other biography you mentioned, but given your bad faith about "Madame Curie", I have no reason to trust you on this one. I any case, I believe "Madame Curie" is the most relevant biography to know the state of mind of Marie Curie, as it was written by her own daughter. And again, your biased view show in that you keep on mentioning the fact that she taught Polish to her daughters, without mentioning the fact that her daughter explicitly said they were raised as French girls, and that Marie Curie did not try to instill any kind of Polish nationalism in them. And Generally speaking, no, "Madame Curie" do not describe Marie Curie as "emphatically Polish". Further you keep on arguing about the nationalists feelings of Marie Curie without discussing the point I make about Wikipedia guidelines, which is perhaps the most important point. I would have liked to solve this issue in a simpler way, but I see now it will be difficult to avoid going through the full process of a Wikipedia dispute resolution. Tokidokix (talk) 06:02, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, Binksternet, please show me the Wikipedia Policy that justify your edit for moving the whole content of this discussion at the bottom of this talk page, as well as changing the title of the section. Otherwise I am going to revert this change as well.Tokidokix (talk) 03:18, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Tokidokix, welcome to Wikipedia! As a neophyte editor, you show an impressive grasp of Wikipedia's principles and mechanics.

However, categorical principles are sometimes trumped by common sense. Thus the "Vladimir Nabokov" lead describes the Russian-born and -reared author, who spent only a quarter of his life in Russia (through age 20) and nearly half in the United States, merely as "a Russian-born novelist". Not as a British, German or American novelist, though all together he spent three-quarters of his life in those three countries, most of that in the United States.

Your interpretation of my relation to 79.185.215.70's arguments is topsy-turvy. I first expressed approval of them, then corrected some obvious English-usage errors in them in order to facilitate the discussion. 79.185.215.70's grasp of the controversy is better than his command of English—which is exactly the opposite of the situation in your case. Nihil novi (talk) 06:42, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Nihil novi, no need to welcome me to Wikipedia. I have been an occasional contributor since at least 2006. I usually only make rather non-controversial edit to science articles, which is why I usually do not bother to log into an account.

On the other hand, for someone that seem to be quite active, you seem to be very happy to disregard the most basic WP policies. Apart from your will to disregard WP style guides for biographies, you should know that editing another users's comment without his explicit consent (and you cannot get a consent for a comment posted by an IP) is not acceptable (of course, if you are 79.185.215.70, you have his consent, but then it is sock puppetry -> in both cases you are violating WP policies).

As for 79.185.215.70's comment, they are just repeating the same baseless or irrelevants arguments you and another user have already used without addressing the issues I raised. And if Nabokov is described as "Russian-born", note that he is not described as Russian. "Russian-born American" would not have been shocking I think, but the fact that he did his significant work in different countries may have created trouble for the WP contributors to reach a good consensual formulation. In any case, this is not the case of Marie Curie, who did about all of her work, and spent most of her life, in France. Tokidokix (talk) 08:21, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Nihil novi, Binksternet: It seems that we are in a deadlock. You refuse to address my arguments about Wikipedia guidelines, and in any case I find your arguments about Marie Curie lifelong "emphatic Polishness" unconvincing. Likewise it seems that I cannot convince you that Marie Curie possible nationalistic feelings do not belong to the introductory sentence, and that anyway facts show she was feeling at least as much French as Polish for most of her life. As a first step towards solving this deadlock, I propose that we ask for general advice on the dispute resolution noticeboard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tokidokix (talk • contribs) 07:03, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Nihil novi, Binksternet: I thinbk you have been noticed automatically, but I went on to post our dispute on the noticeboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Marie_Curie

Nihil novi, Binksternet: could you please explain your reasoning for rejecting the dispute resolution post on the noticeboard. You both stated that we should go for a Request For Comment first. But from what I can see on WP:DISPUTE and on the noticeboard page, the noticeboard is supposed to be the initial step to get advice before moving to RFC or other process. I am OK to do a RFC, but I do not think that getting initial external advice on the process can hurt.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tokidokix (talk • contribs)

WP:Request for comment is a step which should be taken before dispute resolution. It would not hurt to get community input on the issue. Binksternet (talk) 05:04, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, I have come across a possible explanation as to why some of your arguments seem so odd to me (and maybe some of mine seems odd to you). There would be in Polish 2 different concepts known as narodowosc (which Polish translate as Nationality in English) and obywatelstwo (translated by Polish as citizenship in English). In France, the concept of nationality is strictly equivalent to the concept of citizenship. This difference can probably be attributed to the different history of the 2 countries. I think however, that in the English world, the meaning of Nationality is more similar to the meaning in France. Something closer (but still not equivalent, I would say) to what you seem to mean by Nationality would be, I think, National Indentity, or possibly Ethnicity. I don't know if this is true, as I just read this. And I don't even know if you are Polish (although I think I can infer it is likely to be the case of at least Nihil novi). And I don't think this will close the discussion either (I would still disagree on the national identity of Marie Curie anyway). I just thought that discussion will be easier if we can clarify that we sometime have different meaning for the same word. Feel free to comment on this :-) Tokidokix (talk) 11:42, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Binksternet, can I ask your help for something? You said in a comment above that there would have been a discussion around september 2012, leading to the GA status for the article, that was involving users TymothyRias, Nihil Novi, John and Piotr, and that had settled for "French-Polish". I would very much like to read it. However, although I could see some previous discussions on this topic (most of them seeming to end without a consensus, by people simply leaving the discussion), I cannot find a discussion involving these users at the given date. I would very much appreciate if you could point it to me. Tokidokix (talk) 11:53, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

GA status was conferred after this discussion: Talk:Marie Curie/GA1.

John and Nihil novi are not in that discussion but you can see their contributions in the archives such as the most recent one: Talk:Marie_Curie/Archive_3.

Hope that helps. Binksternet (talk) 12:17, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I had seen the GA1 discussion, but I was hoping there had been some discussion officially moderated by user ThimotyRias. In the Archive you point to, only Nihil Novi seem to discuss the issue we are talking about (no John there). Also, why are you insisting on changing the title of this section to something less informative and more provocative? Tokidokix (talk) 12:37, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, Nihil novi, could you point me to the first commit you did after the Good Article qualification that changed the lead to "Polish physicist", as well as the discussion that justified this change? Thanks. Tokidokix (talk) 19:19, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Tokidokix, by your reasoning about Wikipedia nationality standards, how would you account for Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004; "nationality: Polish; citizenship: Polish, American"), who moved to the U.S. in 1960 and did most of his writing there, being described in the lead as a "Polish poet"? Nihil novi (talk) 23:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, there is at least three things here. 1- "Polish poet" might be understood as "Poet writing in Polish" anyway. 2-I already acknowledged that not all Wikipedia article were consistent with each others or with the guidelines. But I would say most of the one I read do follow the patterns I mentioned. So I would prefer you to reason on the wording of the guidelines instead of trying to find some random articles that do not respect it. 3-The history shows that you have been yourself involved in the editing of this article, and especially in another discussion/edit battle with User:Dr. Dan about the lead of this very article. So you are basically trying to convince me that you are right in your interpretation of the guidelines by using examples you made yourself. And, as a passing remark, if I understand correctly (but I did not take much time to look in the discussion of that article), it seems that you were opposing Czesław Miłosz to be mentioned as "lithuanian-born", which is strange for someone that is arguing in other articles that for people born in Poland, the country of birth is the most important thing...Tokidokix (talk) 03:17, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a difference between a "Polish poet" and a "Polish-language poet." Czesław Miłosz happened to be both; he was a Polish-language Polish poet. But to use a different example, the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck was a French-language poet and is described in the article lead as a Belgian poet who "wrote in French." Had Miłosz been a Polish-language poet of a nationality other than what it was, like Maeterlinck he would have been so described in his lead; he isn't. Miłosz, like Skłodowska–Curie, was Polish despite living, marrying and working outside Poland and receiving a foreign citizenship. Nihil novi (talk) 04:21, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, although I do not know much about Czesław Miłosz, I am afraid it is still very unclear to me which criterion you are using to judge that a person is Polish. The article says that Milosz said of himself: "I am a Lithuanian to whom it was not given to be a Lithuanian." and "My family in the sixteenth century already spoke Polish, just as many families in Finland spoke Swedish and in Ireland English, so I am a Polish not a Lithuanian poet. But the landscapes and perhaps the spirits of Lithuania have never abandoned me". Which to me clearly means that he was considering himself a Polish poet by language, but a Lithuanian by heart. And he was not born in Poland and it does not even seem that he spent a large proportion of his life in Poland.Tokidokix (talk) 03:56, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

How do you suppose this Lithuanian manqué happened to spend his last days, die and be entombed in Poland's ancient capital, Kraków, rather than in Vilnius, now in Lithuania but from 1920 part of Poland as Wilno, where he had attended school and studied law in the Polish language?

He broke with Poland, which he had served as a diplomatic cultural attaché, in 1951, aged 40. All his life till then, except for brief visits to France, had passed substantially within the Polish cultural sphere. Nihil novi (talk) 05:42, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Now, this is an interesting piece of argumentation, Nihil Novi. So Czesław Miłosz is a "Polish Poet" because he was intumbed in Poland's capital and spent a large part of his life in the Polish cultural sphere except for a few brief visits to France. Let us transpose this reasoning to Marie curie, who was intumbed in France, and spent most of her life in the French cultural sphere (ie France) with only a few brief visits to Poland. Now it would be nice if you could be consistent with your own reasoning and say that Marie Curie was a "French physicist", so that we can stop it here... Tokidokix (talk) 05:55, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

You miss the point, which is that each spent his formative years in Poland. That, and not the circumstances of their entombment, decided their cultural affinities. Nihil novi (talk) 08:05, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

If you consider the ciscumstances of entumbment are not relevant, why did you mention that in the first place? And why would Marie Curie's studies in France not count as formative years anyway? I still think you use different criterions depending on who you are talking about...Tokidokix (talk) 08:15, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Miłosz was entombed in Poland because he was living there when he died — which is a little peculiar, if he is to be viewed as a Lithuanian. As a retired Berkeley professor, he could live in post-communist Poland.

Skłodowska Curie's circumstances were different. She never retired but kept at her work, which was by then tied to the institute she had established in Paris. She was 24 when she left Warsaw for Paris; at that age, a person's national identity is fully formed. Nihil novi (talk) 08:38, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Still do not understand why it is "a little peculiar" for Miłosz to be entombed in Poland rather than Lithuania but not for Marie Curie. Also Marie Curie had many opportunities to continue her work in Poland if she wanted to (in particular at the Warsaw Radium institute). So yes, staying in France was her choice, not that much of a work constraint. I should add again that a person's national identity is different from his nationality (which is what is discussed here), and that your criterion that the formation of national identity can only happen during a certain time of life seem quite arbitrary to me.Tokidokix (talk) 09:02, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

And one last thing. If you claim that Miłosz is Polish for doing his studies in Polish, then Marie Curie is Russian for doing her studies in Russian. In these times, it was forbidden for any school of Poland to provide classes in another language than Russian (and indeed, Marie Curie was fluent in Russian too). She could attend some underground classes in Polish, but I think that most of her official education was done in Russian. Tokidokix (talk) 09:09, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Another issue to be discussed related to the "working mainly in France" version. I think the "mainly" is justified by a footnote (I think by User:Nihil novi), stating she had done physics experiments in Warsaw before leaving for Paris. But a reading of her biography clearly show these "experiments" were just some practical training done in the framework of the Flying university at an undercover lab hidden in the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw. She was just trying to reproduce experiments described in training books there, not doing any kind of research. Further, the biography "Madame Curie" clearly states that these experiments where not even sufficient to equal the level of French high school training:

'She thought she had had sufficient scientific preparation to pursue the courses of the university. But her solitary work in the country, in the governess's room at Szczuki, near Przasnysz, the knowledge she had acquired by correspondence with M. Sklodovski, and the experiments attempted by hook or crook in the Museum of Industry and Agriculture, did not take the place of the solid baccalaureate training of the Paris schools. In mathematics and physics Marie discovered enormous holes in her "culture."' (Madame Curie, Chapter VIII)

Therefore, unless one want to consider all high school students to be experimented physicist, it is very wrong to say that Marie Curie worked as a Physicist in Warsaw prior to coming to Paris (she did work in Poland, but only as a private teacher and a governess). Tokidokix (talk) 17:35, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Here is another important fact, that I think (along with other quotes I have already provided) support my claim that Poland should be seen as the "country of origin" of Marie Curie, and France as her country. In the first scientific communication (18th July 1898) announcing the discovery of Polonium, Marie and Pierre Curie write:

"If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to call it polonium from the name of the country of origin of one of us."

It seem quite significant to me that it is written "the name of the country of origin" and not "the name of the country". This shows that they consider France to be the country of Marie Curie at the time of publication of this paper, since otherwise, there would not have had a need to add the "of origin" qualifier to refer to Poland. Tokidokix (talk) 17:54, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

---

First of all, I have no problem with Nihil novi correcting grammatical and spelling mistakes in my comments as I don’t have time to polish my contributions. Secondly, Tokidokix, thank you so much for your precious time spent on answering ‘all’ my points, but if you’re able to refute my arguments one after the other, why haven’t you commented on the quotes from the BBC documentary? Your comments are full of personal research, opinions, overinterpretation and manipulation, e.g., in calling her participation in the Committee for Free Poland a form of socializing, sic! I have plenty of strong quotes from her daughter’s biography and the objective BBC documentary about Maria Sklodowska-Curie’s ‘possible’ (as you say) nationalistic feelings. To clarify my previous arguments:

• There’s a difference between the perfective and continuous forms of a verb, as, for example, ‘a dying person’ is not yet ‘a dead person’ – that was my point. ‘Becoming a Frenchwoman’ doesn’t mean she underwent the process and finally became exclusively a Frenchwoman, as you’re trying to portray her.
• “referring to her collectively with Pierre as French is not surprising”, as a French person wouldn’t be bothered to write “a Polish-French and a French lunatic” when she can write “French”, referring to both. It’s a simplification, the same as with "Maria Sklodowska-Curie", which is the only truly appropriate version of her name (look at the grave and the Nobel Prize diploma) but is constantly being simplified to "Marie Curie".
• ‘again, nobody deny she was an immigrant from Poland. But surely somebody that consider France to be a fatherland to her can be called French, no?’ -> No, at most Polish-French. Furthermore, she never said that she considered France to be her fatherland. Eve Curie, in her biography, describes Poland as homeland, motherland and sometimes also fatherland. Also you said: ‘nobody deny she was an immigrant from Poland’ – to me it seems that you try to deny she was Polish.
• Why would she have tried to make her daughters feel like belonging to Poland? It doesn’t make any sense. “She wished Irene and Eve to learn Polish, and for them to know and love her native land” [from Eve’s book] – It was her native land, not her daughters'. They were born and living in France, had a French father and happened to have a Polish mother. It wasn’t her intention to make Poles of them, as a Polish patriot she just wanted them to know and love her beloved country and language.
• No, it’s your interpretation again. What was said of her was that she made an effort to master the French language, not to integrate into French society.
• It wasn’t my point that she was offered a French honour quite late, but that she refused to accept it. Why would she, if she were such a French national?

Why is it unfair to quote Action francaise if she was so shamed and almost lost her second Nobel Prize because of the criticism? It wasn’t only this newspaper that criticized her. A quote from Eve Curie's book: “Every time an occasion offered to humiliate this unique woman, as during the painful days of 1911, or to refuse her a title, a recompense or an honour, the Academy, for instance, her origins were basely brought up against her: called in turn a Russian, a German, a Jewess and a Pole, she was "the foreign woman" who had come to Paris like a usurper to conquer a high position improperly. But whenever, by Marie Curie's gifts, science was honoured, every time she was acclaimed in another country and unprecedented praise heaped upon her, she at once became, in the same newspapers and over the signatures of the same writers, "the ambassadress of France," the "purest representative of our race's genius," and a "national glory." With equal injustice, the Polish birth of which she was proud was then passed over in silence.” You’re doing the same, trying to pass over her Polish ethnicity/nationality in the name of some editing rules that are not standarised anyway.

As to the argument that she refused to return to Poland. I mentioned she was already settled in Paris, had a good post and daughters who didn’t speak fluent Polish, etc. Why would she start over again (16 years before her death, already ill)? The fact that it was more convenient to stay in Paris doesn’t mean she felt she belonged exclusively to France. She wrote in her diary: “It is a sorrow to me to have to stay forever in Paris”. There’re millions of Polish immigrants working abroad who consider themselves Polish, as she did, it’s nothing unusual. Her difficult decision is perfectly described in Eve’s book: “The idea of returning to her OWN COUNTRY attracted and frightened her at the same time. In the state of physiological misery in which this woman found herself, any decision became terrifying. There was something else: the construction of the laboratory the Curies had so long wanted had at last been decided upon, in 1909. To renounce Paris and rice from France was to reduce this plan to nothing, to kill a great dream. At a moment in her life when she felt hardly strong enough for anything, Marie was torn between two duties which excluded each other. After how many homesick hesitations, with what suffering, she addressed her letter of refusal to Warsaw! Still, she accepted the task of directing the new laboratory from afar and placed it under the practical control of two of her best assistants: the Poles Danysz and Wertenstein. Marie, still very ill, went to Warsaw in 1913 for the inauguration of the radioactivity building.” Again, your suggestion that she ‘wasn’t interested in going back to Poland’ is a manipulation or simply a lie, as she clearly was interested but it wasn’t so easy. One finds later in the book: “Her stubbornness alone was not enough to conquer the difficulties. Poland, convalescing from a long enslavement, was poor: poor in money and poor in technicians. And Marie had not time to make all the arrangements herself or to collect the funds.”

To me, things that she said or that her family and scholars have said about her are more meaningful than your interpretations. Again, the BBC documentary, Dr Patricia Fara (University of Cambridge), Marie's husband Pierre Curie, her daughter Eve Curie, her granddaughter, and other sources describe her as Polish:

• “Article in a newspaper accusing him [Paul Langevin] of hiding behind a Polish woman's skirts […] it was such an insult to his French dignity” – Dr Patricia Fara, University of Cambridge
• “a poor young woman from Poland”
• From a letter by Marie Sklodowska Curie: “It is a sorrow to me to have to stay forever in Paris”
• “It [Henri Becquerel’s research] was not seen as a particularly fruitful research topic, which is probably why she as a Polish woman was enabled to pick it up because there wasn’t a lot of competition for it” - Dr Patricia Fara, University of Cambridge
• Her granddaughter: “It [the affair with Paul Langevin] was a big problem […] she was not only a Polish woman but a woman taking the husband in a family with four children”
• “For the [French] tabloids, the story of a famous female immigrant ruining the marriage of a prestigious Frenchman perfectly suited their nationalistic agenda.”
• The final sentence in the film: “At last, France had made it up to Marie Curie; this brave, brilliant Polish scientist, so truly shamed in life, had received her adopted country’s highest honour” when her body was moved to the Paris Panthéon – again, a Polish emigrant in France who was always seen as a foreigner.

You haven’t refuted my arguments, but you call them baseless or irrelevant. And yes, hiring a Polish governess who taught her children the Polish language supports arguments in favour of her Polishness. You seem to present her as an exclusively French woman who forget her Polish heritage, while she felt Polish unto the grave. My arguments show her not as an aggressive Polish nationalist trying to Polonize everyone around her, but as a Pole living and working in France who had to struggle a little bit because of her Polishness and never lost her sense of Polish identity. From your story it seems that she was a French heroine, born somewhere else (not even worth mentioning where in the introductory paragraph), which had no impact on her later life. But in Eve’s book you find that even Pierre was aware of her strong nationalism: “Knowing you, I am convinced that you will remain Polish with all your soul [Piere about Maria]” and became Polonized a little: “He [Pierre] tried to learn Polish, the most difficult of languages; Pierre took his Polonisation treatment at The Hind.” Furthermore, they corresponded in Polish: “These lines were traced with great industry, in Polish, the barbarian language in which the physicist had wanted to know all the tenderest words. Also in Polish, and in short little sentences that a novice could understand, Marie answered”. During a visit to Poland, “He purposely spoke in his brand-new Polish, which, in spite of the bad accent, dazzled his brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law; and he caught the smile of pride on Marie's glowing face.”

And finally, yes, all standard biographies describe her as emphatically Polish, including Madame Curie by Eve Curie. We must have a different book or you’re ignoring huge parts of it, trying to support your opinion with only a few sentences describing her debatably (and not always directly) as French. I went through the whole book and counted how many times she was described as Polish or a Pole vs. French. Total count: ~37 Polish vs. 3 French. Yes, I do agree that Madame Curie is one of the most relevant biographies, so let’s stick to ‘Polish’ as Eve did. It’s funny how you call your interpretation of a few French-biased sentences “significant”, “important” and “meaningful” (while they are not, really), e.g., that referring to Poland as a "country of origin" instead of "the country" contradicts her Polishness, which is a bold over-interpretation. Two sentences above, you find the phrase, “her own country”, in reference to Poland; this phrase is used several times throughout the book. At the same time, you ignore so evident chunks of Eve’s book describing her as a Polish patriot and nationalist. Quotes from Eve Curie’s book about her mother’s “supposed” lifelong Polish nationalism:

• “Like every Pole of her place and time she was exalted by dreams. There was one dream common to all the youths: the dream of nationhood. In their projects for the future, the desire to serve Poland took precedence of personal ambition, of marriage and of love. […] For them only one thing counted: to work, to build up a magnificent intellectual capital for Poland”
• “The little Polish girl [24 years old] gave nobody the right to call her Marie.”
• “She was Polish, come from Warsaw to study at the Sorbonne”
• “Later on I shall be a teacher in Poland; I shall try to be useful. Poles have no right to abandon their country” (Maria Sklodowska-Curie)
• “He [Pierre] followed her in thought; he would have liked to join her in Switzerland […] or else in Poland, in that Poland of which he was jealous.”
• “Knowing you, I am convinced that you will remain Polish with all your soul, and also that you will never cease to be part of our family in your heart.” (Pierre about Maria)
• “Then, her heart turning toward her own country which had been erased from the map of the world” – the moment when she got the idea of naming polonium after Poland (her own country, mentioned later as ‘the original country’ but you ignored the first sentence, and the slightly changed second phrase is ‘significant’ to you – please don’t make a story out of it as your subtle manipulation doesn’t make any sense)
• "Pierre Curie, 'the foreigner,' was the object of many attentions [in Poland]. His Poles were proud to show Poland to him."
• "For Marie there were two victories instead of one [the end of World War I]: Poland was born again from the ashes, and after a century and a half of slavery became a free country once more. The 'patriotic dream' in the name of which she had once almost […] sacrificed her vocation, and even the love of Pierre Curie, was becoming a reality under her eyes."
• "Her presence gave Marie a little of that Polish intimacy of which her exile had often seemed to deprive her too much."
• "She wanted to make herself the equal of the masters who once had dazzled a young Pole."
• "And above all, like a naive Polish woman, she was afraid of seeming pretentious or ungrateful by refusing the distinction which she imagined her adopted country was offering her."
• “Pierre spoke of the future several times again. He had asked Marie to be his wife; but the answer was not a happy one. To marry a Frenchman and leave her family forever, to renounce all political activity and abandon Poland, seemed to Mlle. Sklodovska like so many dreadful acts of betrayal. She could not and must not.”
• "But, still too shy to make friends with the French, she took refuge among her [Polish] compatriots […] and the young Wojciechovski, a future president of the Polish Republic, became her friends in that colony which formed a little island of free Poland in the Latin Quarter."
• "The Polish woman forgot that France was only her adoptive country [during World War I]"
• "These emigres [Poles in the USA] were acclaiming one who was no longer a scientist, but the symbol of their far-away fatherland [Poland]."
• “Since Poland had become free again, Marie had been haunted by a great project: she wanted Warsaw to possess a radium institute, a centre for scientific research and the treatment of cancer.”
• "In 1925 Marie went to Warsaw to lay the cornerstone of the institute. It was a triumphal visit: memories of the past, promises for the future... The fervour of a whole people accompanied the woman who was called, by one of the orators, 'the first lady-in-waiting of our gracious sovereign, the Polish Republic.'"
• “This was the last time Marie was to see Poland, the old streets of her native town, and the Vistula, which she went to gaze at nostalgically on every visit, almost with remorse. In her letters to Eve she describes again and again this water, this land, these stones, to which she was attached by the most violent, primitive instinct.”
• "This Polish water has within itself such a charm that those who are taken by it will love it even unto the grave."
• “And like the little girl of sixty years ago […] this professor at the Sorbonne was counting in Polish”
• “Her coffin was placed above that of Pierre Curie. Bronya and Joseph Sklodovski threw into the open grave a handful of earth brought from Poland. The gravestone was enriched by a new line: MARIE CURIE-SKLODOVSKA, 1867-1934.”

Eve clearly considered her mother to be Polish; throughout the book, numerous times, she uses “Mme Curie”, “a Pole”, “Polish girl [not only in reference to her childhood]”, “Polish woman”, etc., as synonyms, while "French" is used only 3 times (including the debatable “becoming a Frenchwoman” and the reference to her jointly with Pierre). None of these 3 sentences shows French nationalistic sentiments. Examples of her being called "Polish" or a "Pole":

• "But she had an animated and pleasing face, […] clear eyes and hair and skin of Polish women."
• "The Polish girl on her bench smiled with ecstasy"
• "a poor Polish girl could work until they closed the doors at ten o'clock."
• "The Polish girl was tamed."
• "Could a Polish girl be conquered by a Parisian winter?"
• "No, it is not surprising that a Polish girl of genius, isolated by her arid existence, should have preserved herself for her work."
• "But it is surprising, indeed wonderful, that a scientist of genius, a Frenchman, should have kept himself for that Polish girl, should have unconsciously waited for her."
• "immediate sympathy brought the French physicist and the Polish student together."
• "The attraction he felt from the first moment for the foreign girl who spoke so little was doubled by intense curiosity."
• "Pierre Curie was already the captive of the too intelligent, too lucid Polish girl"
• "Ten more months had to pass before the obdurate Pole accepted the idea of marriage."
• "Pierre could have married no woman other than the fair, tender Polish girl"
• "The Polish girl had travelled far since the morning in November 1891"
• "It would be natural for Dr. Curie to go and live with Jacques, rather than to stay with her, with a foreign woman, a Pole."
• "The Polish woman was solitary no longer [during World War I]"
• "But she retained the audacity and vehemence of a young Polish 'progressive.'"

Personally, I think that "Polish-born French" is an attempt to depreciate her Polishness. She was, by all sources, simply a Pole living and working mainly in France (can anyone deny that she was a Pole who lived and worked in France for two-thirds of her life?). WP:OPENPARA rules can’t change that. I cannot understand why referring to her as Polish is so odious to Tokidokix. Why do you insist on removing this information from the introductory paragraph (you argue that "French" is the one description that best respects WP:OPENPARA, and you want to move material on Marie Curie's attitude to Poland to a separate section)? I think that some of the information that has been presented in this discussion should be used to elaborate on her sense of Polish identity and nationalism, an aspect of her life that is notoriously ignored or denied. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.185.78 (talk) 23:22, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

First, I am sorry, but I am afraid you are either misunderstanding my actions or trying to misrepresent them. I have not been fighting against Marie Curie being mentioned as Polish, nor have I asked for her being referred as uniquely French (even if I did mention that WP:OPENPARA seem to indicate this is the preferred form, I have not been arguing for it). Quite the contrary, I am opposed to editors that are against Marie Curie being in anyway referred to as French and that want to have her referred to only as Polish. I said "Polish-born French" seemed to me to be more consistent with other Wikipedia articles (I gave several examples above), but I am personally fine with "Polish-French" or "French-Polish".

And again, my point with the quotes was to answer Binksternet saying that the biography "Madame Curie" was never referring to Marie Curie as French. The quotes were here to establish that this was false. Secondly, your quotes are misleading, since they almost all come from the description of the younger years of Marie Curie (her youth in Poland, then her first years in France until about the marriage with Pierre Curie). She was of course not going to be referred as French when she was a girl that had never left Poland and had not French nationality yet. Check and you will see that 80% of your quotes come from the first half of the book.

In any case, again, the discussion here is not about whether she can be referred to as Polish, but on whether she can be referred to as French. Which is why I selected the quotes that are supporting this view. I do not have the time to look again in the biography right now, but I have no doubt I could find more. For example, I am pretty sure France is mentioned as her "fatherland" several times, just like Poland.

There are several other points I should address in your post, but I since my time is not unlimited, I will just make a few remarks about some of the points that stroke me most on first reading.

First remark, I would appreciate that you do not accuse me so lightly of making comments "full of personal research, opinions, overinterpretation and manipulation". I believe I have made a fair effort to present my point of view and to support it with citations. I certainly deny any intention of manipulation, and frankly I felt more that it was you that tried to misrepresent my position as if I was arguing for mentioning her uniquely as French. I have re-explained above, so if there was any misunderstanding regarding my position, I hope it is now cleared. I acknowledge that you also invested times in your replies, which is good, but if we are going to prolong this discussion, would you consider using a Wikipedia account so as to make it easier to follow?

Then, the quote "I am convinced that you will remain Polish with all your soul" is in a letter from Marie's brother Joseph. It is not from Pierre, as you claim twice. You cite the sentence "Pierre took his Polonisation treatment at The Hind.”, but you omit the sentence that come just after that says: "at Sceaux, where he brought his young wife in September, it was Marie's turn to become Gallicised". (Gallicised means "Frenchified", in reference to Gaul, the ancient name of France). Thus yes, as is normal with two lovers, they acquire the culture of the other.

I did not answer thoroughly to your quotes from the BBC documentary because I have not seen it yet (and also because having little esteem for TV, I certainly have more consideration for a 300 pages biography than for a small made-for-TV documentary, even from the BBC). Briefly, though, some of the things that strike me:

• “It [Henri Becquerel’s research] was not seen as a particularly fruitful research topic, which is probably why she as a Polish woman was enabled to pick it up because there wasn’t a lot of competition for it” - Dr Patricia Fara, University of Cambridge --> that is quite contradictory with "Madame Curie", that states clearly that Marie Curie chose this topic because it was exciting and new for her, not because that would have been the only one she would have been "enabled to pick" (further there is no indication in the book that she would have suffered discrimination as a student due to her foreign origins; indeed I think it is even written somewhere that foreign students where well considered at La Sorbonne)
• Again the fact that Far-right newspapers and tabloids bashed Marie Curie at the time of the Langevin scandal is not that surprising given the mentality of the time. But one could as easily find quotes from newspapers that praise Marie Curie.
• As for Marie Curie not receiving all the honors she should have in due time, the same could be said about Pierre Curie (and indeed, in the biography she wrote of her late husband, Marie Curie write bitterly about the lack of acknowledgement of Pierre's great work by the government). "Madame Curie" actually shows numerous times that the biggest problem here is that both Marie and Pierre Curie are too "pure" to accept to play the political games that would allow them to receive funds and honors.

• "(her own country, mentioned later as ‘the original country’ but you ignored the first sentence, and the slightly changed second phrase is ‘significant’ to you – please don’t make a story out of it as your subtle manipulation doesn’t make any sense)". --> I am not sure what you mean, but I think you are mistaken (and again, I do not like that you say I use manipulation). I was not quoting the book here, but translating the sentence in the original paper written by Marie and Pierre on Polonium. To be exact, the paper read (in French): "Si l'existence de ce nouveau métal se confirme, nous proposons de l'appeler polonium, du nom du pays d'origine de l'un de nous." The translation I gave is perfectly word-for-word, no manipulation. And again, this is written by Marie and Pierre, not by Eve.

• "There’s a difference between the perfective and continuous forms of a verb, as, for example, ‘a dying person’ is not yet ‘a dead person’ – that was my point. ‘Becoming a Frenchwoman’ doesn’t mean she underwent the process and finally became exclusively a Frenchwoman, as you’re trying to portray her." --> No. The expression "On becoming a Frenchwoman, she had not" imply the process is finished. Anyway, I can refer you to the French original version if you need confirmation. And you I never wrote "exclusively".
• "It wasn’t my point that she was offered a French honour quite late, but that she refused to accept it. Why would she, if she were such a French national?" --> Her husband Pierre refused also the Legion d'honneur. As is shown in "Madame Curie", both Pierre and Marie's morality were opposing them accepting such things.

As for her participation in the Committee for Free Poland, I am just requesting more details and citation about it. From "Madame Curie", it seem like Marie Curie stopped getting involved with the Polish nationalists in Paris after a few month: her father had written to her that it would create problems for her in Poland if her name was to be mentioned somewhere; and further she found herself totally absorbed by her studies. A few years later, after her sister moved back to Poland, she even seem to have lost most contact with the Polish community of Paris. She is actually described as having very little life outside of her laboratory and her family. I do not remember her taking part in the Committee for Free Poland in "Madame Curie". I may be wrong, but could you find me the relevant information in Madame Curie, or maybe somewhere else? And something that would describe her activities there? I have nothing against this being mentioned. I would just like some sources for it, as it seem like "Madame Curie" do not support it (unless I forgot the relevant parts). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tokidokix (talk • contribs) 16:03, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

---

Yes, you’re right, the quote: "I am convinced that you will remain Polish with all your soul" is from her brother’s letter, it’s my mistake, I got lost in my notes. But it doesn’t change the fact that the quote is about Maria and shows her incredibly strong Polish identity.

I’ve done some statistics, as you asked. Of 35 quotes from Marie Curie describing her literally as “Polish” or “a Pole” (including “a Polish woman” in her adulthood, the last part of the book) 14% come from Part One, 63% from Part Two, and 23% from Part Three. She is referred to as “French” or a “Frenchwoman” only 3 times throughout the whole book (including the debatable “becoming a Frenchwoman” and the reference to her jointly with Pierre). It’s very weak evidence to support her Frenchness. Furthermore, I haven’t found a quote from Maria Skłodowska-Curie calling herself a Frenchwoman. Eve clearly considered her mother to be Polish; throughout the book she uses “Mme Curie” and “a Pole/Polish” as synonyms, which is not the case with “Frenchwoman/French”.

Furthermore, I don’t agree that the sentence, “The choice of this name [polonium] proves that in becoming a Frenchwoman and a physicist Marie had not disowned her former enthusiasms”, indicates that the process was finished and she had become a Frenchwoman. Otherwise Eve would have kept calling her a “Frenchwoman” or “French” in the later parts of the book, but she does not; instead she keeps calling her “Polish”. The clear message is that her former enthusiasm hadn’t let her to become a Frenchwoman.

You wrote that another “important” and “significant” fact that supports your claim that Poland should be seen as the "country of origin" of Marie Curie, and France as her country, is the sentence: "If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to call it polonium from the name of the country of origin of one of us."; otherwise it should be written "the name of the country". In the book, the sentence in question is translated as follows: “If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to call it polonium from the name of the original country of one of us” -> sounds more like a native country. Furthermore, two sentences earlier, Poland is described as “her own country”, which shows that “original country” and “own country” were used as synonyms and there’s no need to over-interpret this phrase as being against her Polishness. Your significant discovery is invalid. The fact alone that she named polonium after Poland, not France, shows her nationalistic sentiments.

Additionally, you shouldn’t be sure that France is mentioned as her "fatherland" several times, just like Poland, because France is mentioned only twice as fatherland while Poland is mentioned 6 times as “fatherland”, once as “motherland”, 6 times as “native land” and 4 times as “own country/her country”. These are just simple counts from the book, but I’m providing them since you used this book in trying to demonstrate that she felt equally French as Polish, while the book reads against you. Besides, “homesick hesitations” before deciding against returning to Poland means that Poland was home to her; please don’t degrade Poland to “the country of origin”. Anyway, I’ve previously provided a list of quotes showing her strong nationalistic affection for Poland.

Moreover, you not only request more details about the Committee for Free Poland, but you do personal research. You clearly wrote: “he might as well have seen her participation at the committee meetings as an occupation allowing her to meet other Polish-born friends”, without providing the source of this information. Even if you don’t have much information about her involvement in the Committee, you cannot, without strong evidence, assume that it was a form of socializing. It seems like personal research to me, or just your imagination. I want to remind you that you were the first to accuse me of doing original research, while admitting that you were presenting your “opinions” and “a point of view”; I just pointed that out.

As to the claim that “she have lost most contact with the Polish community of Paris”, I have a quote from Eve’s book: “Workers of many nationalities succeeded each other in the Tower of Babel that was the Radium Institute. There was always a Pole among them. When Mme Curie could not bestow a university scholarship on one of her compatriots without injustice to some better qualified candidate, she paid the expenses of the young man from Warsaw out of her own money, a generosity of which the young man never knew.”

Finally, you tend to deprecate published sources that stand against your opinions, e.g., the BBC documentary. I believe that Dr Patricia Fara has greater expertise in this field than you. I quoted her sentence as she called Maria a “Polish woman” (besides, the fact that Maria was excited about Henri Becquerel’s research doesn’t contradict Dr Fara’s statement that there wasn’t a lot of competition for it). Eve Curie's book is not the only available source; furthermore, Marie Curie is affected by Eve's personal and emotional attachment to her mother, and thus is not entirely objective and has been criticized for intentionally omitting some aspects of Maria’s life. Still, the book stands against you and shows Maria Skłodowska-Curie as mostly Polish (none of your quotes show strong evidence of French nationalistic sentiments).

To sum up, according to the BBC documentary, Dr Patricia Fara, Eve Curie, Maria’s granddaughter, other biographies by Susan Quinn, Janice Borzendowski, Barbara Goldsmith and even Maria Skłodowska-Curie herself – she was emphatically Polish and felt mostly Polish; that is why she was described in the BBC production as a Polish scientist working and living in France. Your whole point that “she was feeling at least as much French as Polish for most of her life” or “was feeling more French than Polish 30 years later” is not reflected in the sources presented and seems to be original research with insufficient support (“and personal research is bad”, someone said). All the sources stand against you, including Eve Curie's Marie Curie, which you praise. If you want to prove your point, provide a quote from Maria Skłodowska-Curie calling herself a Frenchwoman. Furthermore, provide as many quotes about her Frenchness as there are items of evidence for her Polishness, to counterbalance the arguments that speak for her Polish identity. Otherwise you have no basis for claiming that she felt equally as French as Polish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.185.78 (talk) 22:09, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Again, the quotes I gave in the beginning were to contradict the assertion that she was never qualified as French in "Madame Curie". Not to start a statistical war.

This being said, not wanting to have to blush from my "80% in first half" previous estimate, I briefly checked that she was mostly qualified as Polish in the first half of the book (in which, for the most part, she do not have French nationality). I did a search on an electronic copy of the book for the term "Polish" (sorry, I did not take the time to search for Pole or other synonyms), and what I found is: 16 times (72%) qualified as Polish, in the first half, 6 times in the second half (28%). Moreover, out of the 6 times she is qualified as Polish in the second half, 3 times are used in reference to her past life in Poland ("as a little Polish girl of sixteen", "Polish birth", "young Polish progressive"). That does leave only 3 occurrences (14%) in the second half of the book where she is qualified as "presently" Polish. There are probably some other occurrences were a synonym of Polish is used, but my point remains that she is much less qualified as Polish when she is past 30 year old that when she is younger.

And again, my point is not that she cannot be qualified by "Polish". My point is that she can perfectly be qualified as "French" as well, and that she probably would not have opposed it. She certainly had nostalgia of Poland, as any immigrant would have, but she still decided to stay in France until her death. The book even describes how, after her husband her father-in-law's death, she has the Curie family grave in Sceaux prepared to have a room for her at her death. So, yes, she intended to live and die in France, even if it was tempting for her to go back to her family in Poland.

"none of your quotes show strong evidence of French nationalistic sentiments" --> here is one, already mentioned: "Marie had only one thought: to serve her second fatherland"

I am not exactly trying to deprecate the BBC documentary. I do prefer books, but the fact is just I did not watch the BBC documentary, so it is difficult for me to address it. As for Dr. Fara, I am sure she is competent, but having myself a PhD in a top university of my country of residence, I know enough not be impressed by title: even a PhD do not have ultimate knowledge. Still, I would have no problem believing she is competent, but it is just that your quote from her about Marie Curie's choice of PhD seem inconsistent with what is described in the book "Madame Curie" (even though Eve Curie usually like to mention all the troubles her parents had to go through). I agree that "Madame Curie" has probably its flaws too, but I would have liked to know upon which source are based Dr Fara's statements.

As for the quote from the communication about the discovery of Polonium, the original is in French, and it does read as, word-for-word, "country of origin".

As for the Comittee for Poland thing, you are misunderstanding my sentences when you accuse me of personal research. When I write "From the elements I have, she might as well have done X", I do not mean I know she has done X. I just mean that there is no evidence of what she was actually doing there. I have seen several editors claim she was an "active member" of the Comittee for Poland. But I can't find so far any sign/description of her activities in this comittee. Indeed, I think "Madame Curie" do not even mention it. (Only some meetings with Polish nationalists during her first months in Paris, that she stop at the request of her father as well as because of her preference for deep studies).Tokidokix (talk) 11:49, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Since you have access to a computer, please feel free to view the BBC documentary, at your convenience, here: "The Genius of Marie Curie: The Woman Who Lit Up the World"

Could you please provide the context of the Francophile quotation, "Marie had only one thought: to serve her second fatherland". Would it by any chance relate to her World War I service in the mobile x-ray "petites Curies"? If so, she was simply showing her public-spiritedness as a resident of France, and contributing to the defeat of her native country's (Poland's) Austrian and German partitioners. Nihil novi (talk) 21:27, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Your division into 2 parts is weird as the book is naturally divided into three parts. First part describing her life in Poland, 2nd her life in France before Pierre’s death (before and after obtaining French nationality) and 3rd after Pierre’s death. She’s not less qualified as Polish in the third part than in the first, just the opposite, almost twice as much (5 vs. 8). The majority of ‘Polish/Pole’ instances occurs in the second part and refers to her both before and after getting married. Furthermore, all three occurrences of ‘French’ referring to Maria come from the second part, not the third one. Finally, you totally misunderstood the reference to ‘her past life’ in the third part, because they read:

• “Polish birth of which she was proud”
• “she retained the audacity and vehemence of a young Polish "progressive."”
• “like the little girl of sixty years ago […], this professor at the Sorbonne was counting in Polish”

They all mean that she remained Polish and describe her as "presently" Polish, you can’t disqualify them.

As to your quote about her affection for France. The sentence is indeed about her service in the mobile x-ray and is given out of context. The book reads:

“Poland is partly occupied by the Germans. What will be left of it after their passage? I know nothing about my family. [...]The Polish woman forgot that France was only her adoptive country; the mother did not dream of going to join her children; the frail, suffering creature disdained her own ills, and the scientist put off her personal work until better times. Marie had only one thought: to serve her second fatherland.”

In this fragment she is referred to as a ‘Polish woman’ and France is mentioned as ‘only her adoptive country’ but during these difficult times of war she forgot that France is only an adoptive country and decided to help the people in need as she could.

Still, "country of origin" is synonymous to “country of origin”, “original country”, “native country”, “her own country”, “fatherland” and “motherland”, there’s no basis to degrade Poland to the place of birth only.

What exactly is inconsistent? Again, Dr Fara’s quote doesn’t not interfere with ‘Marie Curie’ as the fact that Maria was excited about Henri Becquerel’s research doesn’t contradict Dr Fara’s statement that there wasn’t a lot of competition for it.

If you don’t know what was her involvement in the Committee, please spare us your speculations without any evidences. As to the contacts with Poles, 'Marie Curie' describes her contacts with Polish nationalists, returns to Poland and effort she made to establish Radium Institute in Warsaw etc.

You still haven’t proven that “she was feeling at least as much French as Polish for most of her life” or “was feeling more French than Polish 30 years later”. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.185.78 (talk) 17:10, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

We could argue about what is the best division, but splitting in half seems natural enough to me. The part II span periods of the life of Marie Curie before and after she received French nationality. So this is not a very relevant division for the point I was making. As for the quotes, I will give you that the one about "Polish birth"is debatable, but the other two are clearly intended as references to her youth in Poland. ("young Polish progressive": she is not that young at the time the quote is made, and the book had expanded a lot on her contact with positivism while she was in Warsaw; "as a little Polish girl of sixteen" -> this one is obviously a reference to her youth, and is not the one you answered to, by the way)

Your arguments against the "to serve her second fatherland" quote are thoroughly unconvincing. First, you truncate your quote from the book to concatenate a part of a letter an a subsequent paragraph to make it seems like she would join the army out of worry for her family in Poland. Second, you try to argue she would fight alongside France out of hate of the Poland-occupying German, but then France was an ally of Russia in the war, so that was actually making her fight with the other power controling Poland (and the one she had the most reason to resent). Finally, it is indeed written "to serve her second fatherland", not "to serve her country of residence".

When a country is mentioned as "country of origin", it usually implies there is a different "current country". I do not think you will often find written that USA is the "country of origin" of George W. Bush, for example.

If you want some facts to be mentioned on Wikipedia, it is your duty to establish the sources proving that fact. It is not other people's duty to establish that the fact is false. Again, I do not remember any mention of the Comitee For Free Poland in the 300 pages of "Madame Curie". If she was really active in this comitee, there should be some sources for it, telling us when she was participating into it, and what kind of activity she had.

As for proving whether she was feeling more French of Polish, I already argued above that this could only be a matter of opinion and personal research. Which is why I have argued since the beginning that the important things were the objective facts: she had French nationality, she was living in France, she did all of her notable work in France. That qualify her as "French physicist" in at least 3 different ways (again I am not arguing that the "Polish" part should be removed here, but I argue that it is absurd to remove the "French" part). Tokidokix (talk) 11:00, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I commented on quotes form the last part, "as a little Polish girl of sixteen" is form part II. I wasn’t trying to defend quotes form the second part as there’re so many of them, one less doesn’t make any difference. Still, there’s no quotes describing her as French in the third part and there’re many more quotes referring to her as Polish through the whole book in comparison to only 3 “French” phrases.

I can provide the whole fragment, it doesn’t change anything:

“Poland is partly occupied by the Germans. What will be left of it after their passage? I know nothing about my family.

An extraordinary emptiness had been created all around Marie. Her colleagues and all her laboratory workers had joined their regiments. Only her mechanician, Louis Ragot, who had not been mobilised on account of a weak heart, and a little charwoman about as high as the table, remained with her.

The Polish woman forgot that France was only her adoptive country; the mother did not dream of going to join her children; the frail, suffering creature disdained her own ills, and the scientist put off her personal work until better times. Marie had only one thought: to serve her second fatherland. In the terrible contingency her intuition and initiative revealed themselves once more.”

Am I try to argue? I haven’t mentioned neither Russia, nor Germany, nor fighting for Poland, I’m just quoting the book, which reads that she’s worried about her family in Poland, emptiness had been created around her and during these difficult times of war she forgot that France is only an adoptive country and decided to help the people in need as she could by inventing the mobile x-ray. In this fragment she is referred to as a ‘Polish woman’ and France is mentioned as ‘only her adoptive country’. It’s not a quote about her French nationalistic sentiments but about mobilization during the war.

G. W. Bush... so what? I said that in the book Poland was described as “original country”, “native country”, “her own country”, “fatherland” and “motherland”, all being used synonymously and there’s no point of taking “country of origin” as an evidence supports degradation of Poland to her place of birth only. Even if you go for holidays to a different country you might be asked: “where are you originally form”? Not convincing at all.

Yes, that’s right – “it is your duty to establish the sources proving that fact”, you should take your advice seriously. Just want to remind you that it wasn’t me who was proposing a new fact. I haven’t said that she was an active member of the Committee (by the way, ‘Marie Curie’ doesn’t describe her whole life but selected aspects, this one could have been omitted). I just opposed your suggestion that this could be a form of socializing as you haven’t supported it with evidences. If you want to prove that Committee was a socializing club and she felt “more French” than Polish provide something more than your opinions.

I guess it doesn’t make sense to continue our discussion, as it’s becoming a matter of opinion. You were trying to portray Poland as a country of origin/birth only, I’ve provided counterarguments (supported by all sources presented) that she was emphatically Polish. As you’re not arguing that the "Polish" element should be removed, and I’m not arguing to remove “French” neither, I guess that’s it. I’m totally fine with “Polish, French-naturalized” as it’s the most accurate. “Polish-French” is ok, but in my opinion it’s less descriptive and could be misleading (suggesting mixed descent).

I have already argued the point is the distribution of quotes before/after her becoming French.

"G. W. Bush... so what?..." -> my understanding was that we were discussing the quote from the Polonium discovery paper, which states "country of origin".

"I haven’t mentioned neither Russia, nor Germany, nor fighting for Poland" --> You are right, actually it was Nihil Novi that mentioned Germany.

Again, I have not argued she was socializing at the Comitee for Free Poland. It is just that some authors were claiming her to be "active at the Comittee for Free Poland" as a proof of her nationalism, but I could see no source describing her activity at this Comittee (nor if she was even part of it and at what time of her life).

I certainly agree that this discussion will end up in being a matter of opinion. Which is why I have argued since the beginning that the article should be based on known facts about the life of Marie Curie, not on trying to guess what could have been her state of mind at different time of her life. And if "Madame Curie" describe her as emphatically something, that is as emphatically a scientist ("a super-nerd" in modern vocabulary :-). Tokidokix (talk) 12:12, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

"G. W. Bush... so what?..." - my understanding was that we were discussing the quote from the Polonium discovery paper, which states "country of origin". -->yes, I know, it’s why I wrote that it’s synonymous to “original country”, “native country”, “her own country”, “fatherland” and “motherland”. And even when going abroad for holidays, one might be asked: “where are you originally form?”. It’s not an argument against her Polishness.

Well, even if you omit ‘active’, being a member of “Comittee for Free Poland" is an argument in favour of her nationalism :)

Apart from providing our interpretation and guesses, we provided many quotes and sources that show her state of mind and they are meaningful. All following expressions are based on known facts: “Polish-French, French-Polish, Polish-born French and Polish, French-naturalized”. At the same time, they are all slightly different and we have to decide which one suits best based on the sources provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.185.78 (talk) 22:26, 10 October 2013 (UTC)