Conversation

You may have been spared exposure to this periodic shitstorm if you’re not Polish or French: was Maria Skłodowska-Curie a “Polish” or “French” scientist? 😱

The only useful lesson we may draw from the whole story is the answer to the question: why was young Maria even forced to go to study in Paris?

And she had to because universities in Russia-occupied Poland did not accept women, who could at best obtain secondary education 🤷 Leading Polish scientists organised covert education for women called Flying University (due to frequent changes in the teaching location), which is an amazing but entirely separate story. But, using modern analogies, you can’t study CERN-level physics at lectures organised in private flats at risk of arrest.

For me, the main lesson from Skłodowska’s story is that state policies, obviously, do impact personal choices of people, including emigration. States complaining about “brain drain” are essentially like the popular meme guy putting a stick into his bicycle’s wheel and complaining about this entirely self-inflicted harm.

Yet another topic is the nationality-obsessed attribution of “ours” and “theirs” scientists or artists, which expresses the more the person in question doesn’t care about it. One Russian Jew told me a suitable joke, which perfectly sums up the public perception of this:

— Mom, other children call me a “Jewish mouth” at school

— Well, you have to stand that for a while and then when you get the Nobel prize everyone will start calling you a “renowned Russian scientist”.