Documentary on Marie Curie's 1918 Italian journey premieres at University of Pisa

On January 18, the University of Pisa will screen the documentary 'Il viaggio di Marie Curie in Italia' directed by Pawel Cichonski, marking the 90th anniversary of the scientist's death. The 25-minute film focuses on Curie's three-week stay in Italy in 1918, when she visited thermal springs and mines in Tuscany—including San Giuliano, Montecatini, and Larderello—to study natural radiation in waters, fumaroles, and rocks. She arrived alone by train from Paris at 3:30 AM on July 30, 1918, invited by Raffaello Nasini, professor of chemistry at the University of Pisa, and accompanied by his assistant Camillo Porlezza. The documentary was produced jointly by the Polish Academy of Sciences in Rome, the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry of the University of Pisa, and the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum in Warsaw. Researcher Marcin Górecki provided meticulous historical details. Marie Curie (born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, 1867; died in Passy, 1934) was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903, with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) and later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for discovering radium and polonium. After Pierre's death in 1906, she succeeded him as head of the General Physics chair at the Sorbonne. The documentary sheds light on a little-known chapter of her research in Italy.