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Marie Curie's laboratory notebooks, from her pioneering work on radium around 1900, are still radioactive today. They are kept in lead-lined boxes in Paris.

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Marie Curie and her husband Pierre discovered polonium and radium in 1898, and she won Nobel Prizes in physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911. Little was known then about the dangers of radiation: she reportedly carried test tubes of radioactive material in her pockets and kept them in her desk drawer. She died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia, a failure of the bone marrow, believed to have been caused by her long exposure. Her notebooks are held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and readers who ask to see the originals must sign a waiver. The main contaminant, radium-226, loses half its radioactivity only every 1,600 years or so, so the pages will stay radioactive for many centuries.

Türkçe oku
Marie Curie'nin radyum üzerine çalıştığı yıllardan kalan laboratuvar defterleri, aradan bir asrı aşkın zaman geçmesine rağmen hâlâ radyoaktif. Defterler Paris'te, kurşun kaplı kutularda saklanıyor.

Marie Curie ve eşi Pierre, 1898'de polonyum ile radyumu keşfetti; Marie Curie 1903'te fizik, 1911'de kimya dalında Nobel Ödülü aldı. O yıllarda radyasyonun tehlikeleri pek bilinmiyordu. Anlatılanlara göre Curie radyoaktif madde dolu deney tüplerini cebinde taşır, çekmecesinde saklardı. 1934'te, uzun süre radyasyona maruz kalmasından kaynaklandığı düşünülen aplastik anemiden, yani kemik iliğinin kan yapamaz hâle gelmesinden öldü. Defterleri Fransa Ulusal Kütüphanesi'nde korunuyor; asıllarını görmek isteyenler bir sorumluluk belgesi imzalamak zorunda. Başlıca kirletici olan radyum-226'nın radyoaktivitesi ancak 1.600 yılda bir yarıya indiği için sayfalar yüzyıllarca radyoaktif kalacak.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Marie Curie
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