72 Women Scientists Soon on the Eiffel Tower
On Monday, January 26, 2026, marking the anniversary of the first groundbreaking for the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1887, a new chapter in the history of French science is being written.
In Paris, Anne Hidalgo, the city’s mayor, officially received the list of 72 women scientists proposed to be featured on the iconic monument.
A powerful symbolic gesture recognizing researchers who have long remained in the shadows.
Since 1889, the Eiffel Tower has celebrated science through the names of 72 French scholars, all men, engraved in gold letters around its first level. A prestigious tribute—but one that reflects its time: exclusively male.
Nearly 140 years later, a project initiated by the City of Paris, the Eiffel Tower Operating Company (SETE), and the association Femmes & Sciences aims to correct this omission. An equivalent frieze will be added just above the original one, bearing the names of 72 women scientists whose contributions have profoundly shaped research, medicine, physics, chemistry, technology, computer science, and many other fields. The inscriptions, scheduled for early 2027, will follow the style of the original frieze: gold lettering and the same typography, displayed on all four sides of the first level.
The expert committee, co-chaired by Isabelle Vauglin, astrophysicist and vice-president of Femmes & Sciences, and Jean-François Martins, president of SETE, worked for several months with the CNRS, INSERM, INRIA, and other institutions. The committee selected French women who worked in the exact sciences or technologies between 1789 and today, and who were historically made invisible despite major discoveries.
Among them, Marguerite Perey (1909–1975) perfectly illustrates the spirit of the project. Born into a modest background, she earned a state diploma in chemistry in 1929 from the École d’enseignement technique féminin de Paris before joining the Radium Institute as an assistant to Marie Curie. Specializing in the study of actinium, she contributed to the discovery of francium in 1939. After completing her doctorate in physics, she joined the CNRS, became a full professor holding the chair of nuclear chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, and founded the laboratory that would later become the Nuclear Chemistry Laboratory of the Nuclear Research Center.
A member of the Commission on Atomic Weights for more than a decade, she was also the first woman elected as a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1962.
The list unveiled on January 26 naturally includes Marie Curie and her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie, but also many lesser-known scientists, long overlooked, who will now stand alongside Ampère, Lavoisier, Daguerre, and Becquerel.
“Making women’s contributions to science visible is essential,” explains Isabelle Vauglin. “Fighting invisibility and gender stereotypes also means encouraging young girls to pursue scientific and technological fields that are still far too male-dominated.”
The list of 72 names must still be approved by the Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Technologies before work begins.
The objective is clear: to shine a light on these women and their contributions, and to offer the public a more complete and fair vision of the history of French science—at the very heart of the country’s most visited monument.