The French Post released this stamp on 18 November 2011 to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. The stamp does not display any overt scientific connection to this important protein, instead the designer has chosen to illustrate the importance with 3 lively human silhouettes casting unlikely shadows that spell the word "vie", which means "life" in french. The importance of insulin was supposedly discovered in 1921 in Toronto and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1923 to Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Best for this discovery. However, the Romanians have claimed that Nicolae Paulescu is the true pioneer of insulin, who had developed the substance in 1916 and experimented it on a dog. Paulescu had to interrupt his work because of World War I, and only published his work entitled "Research on the Role of the Pancreas in Food Assimilation" in the Archives Internationales de Physiologie in August 1921, and filed patent 6254 for his invention on 10 April 1922 with the Romanian Ministry of Industry and Trade. More can be read about the insulin itself at PDB: http://www.pdb.org/pdb/101/motm.do?momID=14.
The United Nations has declared 2011 to be the International Year of Chemistry, this year also marks the centenary of the award of the Nobel Price for Chemistry to Marie Curie, for her discoveries related to radium. The most important medical consequence of Marie's discoveries, is that a small amount of radium could destroy human tissue, thus opening the way to the search to treat cancers. La Poste of France issued the stamp marking this important year on 28 January 2011, featuring Marie Curie in her laboratory. The postal authorities of many countries will be issuing stamps commemorating the International Year of Chemistry, and many of them will feature Marie Curie, so far Sri Lanka did it on 30th January, and Spain on 7th February. I supposed as the year goes, we shall see more.
