The eminent Polish scientist and two-time Nobel Prize winner Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1876-1934) was the first woman whose achievements were honoured in the Paris Pantheon. Located in the heart of the Latin Quarter, the building, erected between 1758 and 1789 as the Church of St Genevieve, has served as a mausoleum for prominent figures of French science, culture and history since 1885.

The decision by François Mitterrand, President of the French Republic, to transfer the remains of Skłodowska-Curie, who died of radiation sickness in 1934, from the Sceaux cemetery to the Pantheon in 1995 was motivated by a desire to honour her achievements in the field of natural sciences, particularly her research into radioactivity. Among Skłodowska-Curie's most significant achievements were the development of Henri Becquerel's theory of radioactivity and the discovery of two elements - polonium, named after the researcher's home country, and radium. Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman in history to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903), awarded to her and her husband Pierre Curie and Becquerel for their research on radioactivity. She was also the first woman to hold a chair at the Sorbonne in Paris - after her husband's death in 1906, she became the first professor of physics at the university. Just five years after this milestone in her career - in 1911 - she was awarded her second Nobel Prize, this time individually, in chemistry. To this day, she remains the only woman awarded a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. In 1932, she established the Radium Institute in Warsaw, which now functions as the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Oncology Centre - Institute.

On 20 April 1995, the ashes of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie were deposited in the crypt of the Pantheon in a tomb of simple, neoclassical form. The ceremonial transfer of the ashes was attended by the then President of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, and the President of France, François Mitterrand, as well as the heiress and daughter of the scientific couple, Ewa Labouisse-Curie. In his speech, Mitterrand stressed the importance of the sites associated with the scientist's life and work, which were not far from the Pantheon, and recalled the toil and glory of her achievements.

Interestingly, the idea of moving the remains of the Curie couple to the Pantheon had already appeared in the local and Polish press the day after Skłodowska-Curie's death on 4 July 1934. However, the initiative was only realised thanks to the efforts of Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (representative of the French Academy), Simone Veil (MEP) and Françoise Gaspard (researcher and writer), who advocated the commemoration of the women in the Pantheon.

By 2018. Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the only woman honoured with the honour of being laid to rest there.

From 8 November 2017 to 4 March 2018, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the scientist's birth, the mausoleum hosted a temporary exhibition dedicated to Skłodowska-Curie's life and achievements, featuring archives, laboratory tools, period documents and personal objects of the researcher.