Is it true that Maria Curie wore a pendant pendant on her neck?

In many collections with interesting facts about scientists, it is argued that the famous Maria Curie so much appreciated the first gram of Radiy he had allocated that she always carried him with her and this negatively affected the scientist’s health. We checked if there is confirmation of this story.

Mentions that Maria Curie wore either a pendant or ampoule with radiation on her chest, meet on a wide variety of resources: from publications in "VKontakte" to the materials of the portal "Moscow24", from "Picabu" to the portal "Scientific Russia". From one material to another, some plot details may change: for example, one of the versions of a pendant with radies Decorated Photo of Pierre Curie, who died shortly after receiving the opening of the Nobel Prize for this.

The earliest mention of this story in Russian -speaking sources we found in the publication of 2004 on an amateur site devoted to radiation. Google sites user Writes: “Outstanding nuclear physicist Maria Sklodovskaya-Kuri, as a result of long-term work with radioactive substances, died of leukemia (cancer). Working with radioactive substances, she did not take any precaution and even wore an ampoule with radius on her chest like a talisman. ” In the 2005 material Similar The story is supplemented by a link to the source - the book of Eve Curie, the daughter of a famous scientist.

In this book of memoirs there really is a fragment about the first gram of the new substance, produced by famous spouses. Eve Curie Writes: “Maria will not part with the first gram of radium she received. She later bequeaths him with her laboratory. <...> Other grams will be valued differently-worth its weight in gold. Radiy, regularly entering the market, becomes the most expensive substance in the world. One gram of radium costs 750,000 francs with gold. ” As we see, Curie Jr. does not specify that this gram of radium (or any other samples of this metal) was stored in the ampoule that her famous mother carried with her. Moreover, in one of the subsequent chapters, Eve tells how Maria Curie “evacuated” the same gram of radium from Paris to Bordeaux: she transported the metal (!) She transported the metal box in a heavy lead box.

Although the authors of most publications on the Internet connect the wearing of ampoules with radius on the chest with ignorance of the dangerous properties of this chemical element, they are in vain underestimate the great scientists. Curi really did not know all the details of the details, but they worked with the metal they opened in the laboratory and even observed its effect on human skin. Eve Curie Writes: “The German scientists Valkhov and Gisel said in 1900 that the new substance acts physiologically, and Pierre, neglecting the danger, immediately subjected its forearm by radium. To his joy, the area of ​​the skin was damaged! In the note for the Academy of Sciences, he calmly describes the observed symptoms: "The skin blushed on a surface of 6 square meters; it has a appearance of a burn, but does not hurt or painfully painfully. After a while, redness, without spreading, begins to become more intensively; scabs were formed on the 20th day, then the wound that was treated with linings The edges to the center, and on the 52nd day there is still a wound in a square centimeter, having a grayish color, which indicates a deeper murder of fabrics. " We add that Madame Curie, transferring several centigrams of a very active substance in a sealed glass tube, received burns of the same nature, although a small test tube was in a thin metal case. ” It would be strange to believe that, having such a life experience, Maria Curie wore an ampoule with radius in the form of a pendant.

The assertion that the Nobel Prize laureate bequeathed the same gram of radium of its laboratory (now the Radiy Institute in Paris), corresponds reality. However, on site The memorial museum, which operates at the institute, we could not find mentions of the ampoule-kulon. If the verified story is true, museum employees would probably talk about it, and the ampoule itself would be put up in one of the halls. Thus, now there is not a single authoritative source in which the story of an unusual jewelry was described.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. E. Curie. Maria Curie
2. https://musee.curie.fr/
3. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/madame-curies-passion-74183598/