i am sassa

Marie Curie’s coffin is lined with nearly an inch of lead. Her body will be radioactive for at least 1,500 more years. The notebooks she left behind are also kept in lead boxes, in a library in France. You’re welcome to have a look at them, after you gear up and sign a waiver. Do I just quit this project now? Because this is like the most badass thing EVER. I painted Madame Curie with a hints of blue. I wanted her to glow. Also as I painted, I watched (listened) to Radioactive, a movie about her life. It was so good it was almost distracting.

Because she was a woman, Curie was not allowed to pursue higher education, so she just went ahead and did it anyway in a secret institution. She worked as a tutor to save enough money to peace out to France, where she attended a research university for Physics and Math. A few years later she married a Physics professor named Pierre Curie, and they made beautiful science together.

Though it was Henry Becquerel who first discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity, it was Curie who named it. Inspired in part by his work, she went to town sciencin’ on radioactive materials. She and her husband are credited for the discovery of radium, thorium, and polonium, the latter being named after her home country. After her husband died in a traffic accident, Marie became the first female professor at the Sorbonne. She was also the first and only woman to win TWO Nobel Prizes in different fields (Physics and Chemistry) She served as Director of Radiology for the Red Cross during WWI. Her x-ray units treated over a million soldiers. Her love of radioactivity took her life at 66 years old; she died of aplastic anaemia.

Thank you, Marie Curie.