"The pretty blue-green light"

Marie Skłodowska-Curie is most known for her work with radiation. She studied elements such as uranium and thorium. She even discovered other radioactive elements: polonium (named after Poland) and radium. Her work with radium seems to be most remembered. She went on to study radioactivity, but never seemed to fully understand its effects on the human body. Many people know that she eventually succumbed to the effects of radioactivity.

However, some might not know that she treated test tubes of radium or polonium as if they were just nothing more than a simple ordinary compound. She routinely walked around her laboratory (which was basically a shed) with test tubes of radioactive elements in her pocket. She also would keep these samples in her desk drawer. In the dark, she would often comment about "the pretty blue-green light" the samples emitted in the dark. However, the damaging effects of radioactive isotopes were not known for some time.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie died on July 4, 1934, from aplastic anemia (a condition developing from prolonged exposure to radioactivity where bone marrow does not produce enough quantities of new cells to replenish blood cells, which in this case, it's all three: red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets). Interestingly, her notes from the 1890's are thought to be too radioactive to handle to this day. They are kept in boxes lined with lead. Anyone who wants to go through these papers have to be fully suited in a radiation suit. It has been mentioned that even her cookbook is too radioactive to handle freely.

On another note, Marie Skłodowska-Curie is currently the only woman who is buried at the Panthéon, Paris for her own achivements. She and her husband Pierre were moved there in 1995, which was a huge honor for Marie, even though it was 60 years after her death.

Bet you didn't know that!