Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize-winning Personal Items to Retain Radioactivity for 1,500 More Years

Marie Curie, renowned as the “pioneer of modern physics,” passed away in 1934 due to aplastic anemia, an unusual ailment linked to her extensive exposure to the radioactive elements she famously discovered, polonium and radium.

Curie, a remarkable figure who holds the distinction of being the sole woman to win Nobel Prizes in two distinct fields, namely physics and chemistry, carried forward the research initiated by the French physicist Henri Becquerel. In 1896, Becquerel unveiled the phenomenon of uranium emitting radiation.

In 1898, Marie and her husband, Pierre Curie, a distinguished French physicist, unearthed a novel radioactive element. They christened this element “polonium” in homage to Mary’s homeland, Poland.

Even more than a century later, a substantial portion of Curie’s personal effects, which includes her clothing, furniture, cookbooks, and laboratory records, remain tainted with radiation, as reported by the “Christian Science Monitor.”

Marie Curie‘s laboratory notebooks, treasured both nationally and scientifically, are securely stored in lead containers at the National Library of France in Paris.

While the library permits visitors to peruse Curie’s manuscripts, all visitors are required to sign a disclaimer and wear protective gear, given that these items are still contaminated with radium-226, which boasts a half-life of approximately 1,600 years.

The notebook is among the numerous artifacts housed at the Wellcome Library in London, which boasts an extensive collection of over 750,000 books, journals, manuscripts, archives, and films that narrate the rich history of medicine and science. Consequently, the library attracts a considerable number of readers every year, primarily comprising historians, students, and academics. Nevertheless, the library is open to anyone with a valid library card.

The overall radioactivity of the notebook was determined to be approximately 120 kBq (equivalent to 3.2 microcuries) of radium-226. The radioactive material is securely contained within the notebook’s pages, with a substantial portion concentrated in the back of its robust cover.

One can envision Marie Curie placing it on the well-worn workbenches in her laboratory in Paris. It’s noteworthy that radium-226 has an extraordinarily long half-life of approximately 1,600 years, which means that the challenges associated with preserving this notebook will persist for a very long time.

Her extensive body of work is now almost a century old, and it will take another 1,500 years for the radioactivity levels to diminish by half.

Marie Curie‘s remains were also impacted by radiation and, as a result, were interred in a coffin fortified with nearly a centimeter of lead.

Curie was laid to rest in the French Panthéon, a mausoleum in Paris that serves as the final resting place for notable French figures, including philosophers such as Rousseau and Voltaire.

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