1. Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes but her research into radioactivity also killed her in the most painful way possible
The Polish physicist Marie Curie was famously the first female winner of a Nobel Prize. Moreover, she’s the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, a remarkable accomplishment. However, her pioneering work came at a price. Curie’s biggest contribution to knowledge was her investigation into radioactivity. Above all, she is credited with discovering the radioactive elements of radium and polonium. She also found a way of isolating radium. Her experiments meant she was exposed to radioactive substances for prolonged periods of time.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the dangers of ionizing radiation were not yet known. So, when Curie began feeling sick in the 1920s, she carried on working as normal. Not only did she keep radioactive material in her personal desk, she even carried it around in her pockets. Curie died in 1934 at the age of just 66. Even in the end, she never linked her illness with her work. Today, with the dangers of radioactive material much better understood, the Nobel prize-winner’s research notebooks and even her personal cookbooks are kept in lead-line boxes and can only be consulted by scholars wearing proper protective equipment.
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