The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris

(bbc.com)

Comments

baxtr 12 June 2025
> Marie Curie worked here from 1914 until 1934, the year of her death, handling radioactive elements including radium, which she and her husband Pierre Curie had discovered in 1898. For most of her life, she did this with bare, increasingly radium-scarred hands.

This almost sounds medieval to my ears. It’s kinda freighting how far we’ve gotten in merely 100 years.

aconst 12 June 2025
I live in Sceaux, bit south of Paris, where she lived some years. I once visited her house (now owned by someone who worked with one or more descendants of her) at some special occasion. One of the bedroom has a radiation sticker, and is officially controlled by the authorities, as some radiation were found. She obviously used to bring some work home :)
odiroot 12 June 2025
*Maria Skłodowska-Curie, as she herself insisted on being called. BBC should know better.
shmeano 12 June 2025
Would it be possible to make a radioactivity camera? I guess not because it doesn’t refract?