Which scientist tried to stop Curie attending her 1911 Nobel ceremony?

Svante Arrhenius tried to stop Marie Curie from attending her 1911 Nobel ceremony. Curie’s second Nobel came during a vicious French press scandal surrounding her relationship with physicist Paul Langevin, who was still married.

Arrhenius, a Swedish Nobel laureate and influential member of the Nobel committee, initially supported Curie’s attendance. As the scandal intensified, however, he wrote asking her to stay away from Stockholm and delay accepting the Chemistry Prize until the allegations had been settled.

Curie refused to let attacks on her private life undermine recognition of her scientific work. She attended the ceremony on 10 December 1911 with her sister and daughter, accepted the prize, and delivered her Nobel lecture the following day.

A common mix-up is to remember Arrhenius as opposing Curie’s prize itself. He did not successfully block the award; his intervention concerned her public appearance at the ceremony. Curie’s 1911 prize honored her discovery of radium and polonium, the isolation of radium, and studies of its compounds.