# @science on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DOmGRoQDlMj
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/34629531-science-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/986491df66.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-09-14T20:00:25.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Science 🧬 (@science) — https://gondola.cc/science

## Caption

🧪 Today, more than 100 years after the Curies’ (Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie) discovery of radium, even the public is well aware of the potential dangers associated with the exposure of the human body to radioactive elements. Yet, from the very first years during which the scientists and their contemporaries were pioneering the study of radioactivity until the mid-1940s, little was concretely understood about both short and long-term health effects.⁠
⁠
⁠
Pierre liked to keep a sample in his pocket so he could demonstrate its glowing and heating properties to the curious, and even once strapped a vial of the stuff to his bare arm for ten hours in order to study the curious way it painlessly burned his skin. Curie, in turn, kept a sample at home next to her bed as a nightlight. Diligent researchers, the Curies spent nearly every day in the confines of their improvised laboratory, with various radioactive materials strewn about their workspaces. After regularly handling Radium samples, both were said to have developed unsteady hands, as well as cracked and scarred fingers.⁠
⁠
⁠
Though the life of Pierre was tragically cut short in 1906, at the time of his death, he was suffering from constant pain and fatigue. Curie, too, complained of similar symptoms until succumbing to advanced leukemia in 1934. At no point did either consider the possibility that their very discovery was the cause of their pain and Curie's eventual death. In fact, all the couple's laboratory notes and many of their personal belongings are still so radioactive today that they cannot safely be viewed or studied.⁠
⁠
⁠
⁠
#mariecurie #pierrecurie #scientists #chemisist #scientist #radium #radioactive #discovery #scientificdiscovery #science

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 3,765
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 37

## Tags

radium, chemisist, science, mariecurie, discovery, scientists, scientificdiscovery, pierrecurie, scientist, radioactive

---
Copyright (c) Gondola