In 1911, which academy failed to elect Marie Curie as a member?

In 1911, the French Academy of Sciences failed to elect Marie Curie as a member.

Curie was already internationally renowned: she had shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics and was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Nevertheless, her candidacy for the French Academy of Sciences narrowly failed, with Édouard Branly elected instead. Contemporary accounts differ slightly on the exact margin, describing her as one or two votes short.

The episode reflected the academy’s resistance to admitting women, as well as hostile press coverage of Curie’s foreign birth, religious views, and private life. She was a Polish-born scientist who had become a French citizen, but some opponents portrayed her as an outsider.

Curie never again sought election to the academy. More than half a century later, her former student Marguerite Perey became the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences, in 1962. Curie was later elected to the French Academy of Medicine in 1922.