The Radium Institute, Paris

Pierre Curie died in 1906 without ever having a proper laboratory. In 1909 Émile Roux of the Institut Pasteur offered Marie a laboratory at Pasteur, and the University of Paris responded. The two institutions agreed to found a Radium Institute with two pavilions: one for the physics and chemistry of radioactive elements under Marie Curie, and one for their biological and medical uses under Dr Claudius Regaud.

The building on the new rue Pierre-Curie was finished in summer 1914, just as war broke out and the young men were mobilised. Marie moved her equipment in herself, using her X-ray cars. "One of my first cares was to have trees planted," she wrote: lime and plane trees, flowerbeds and roses, planted even as long-range guns shelled Paris in 1918.

From 1919 the institute flourished, with researchers from many countries, many of them women and Poles. In January 1934 her daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot discovered artificial radioactivity there. Today it is the Institut Curie, home of the Musée Curie, where her office and laboratory are preserved.