Marie Curie's notebooks are radioactive and must be stored in a lead-lined box in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Curie’s corpse is also radioactive. Her coffin is lined in an inch of lead. Both will remain radioactive for 1,500+ years.
#histodons #histodon #histsci #histmed #science #scientist #radioactive
@DrLindseyFitzharris Apparently even Marie's cookbooks are radioactive! 😱 Presumably all their papers, research or otherwise, from the time are. Scary.
I wonder if Pierre's body is also radioactive. I know he died in an accident in 1906, but he'd already had extensive exposure to radioactivity by then.
Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia, a disease brought on, in her case, by exposure to a large amount of radiation from both her laboratory work and from her work running field x-ray machines during the First World War. There was no surprise there, given the little known about radiation and its effects on our bodies when she did her early work. But it turns out that it’s not only Marie and Pierre Curie who were contaminated - even her notebooks are stored in a lead box.
Dr Lindsey Fitzharris
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