The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris
91 comments
·June 10, 2025baxtr
fhsm
The ~15% infant mortality at the time was spectacular progress and yet by modern standards unbearable. Medieval would have been closer to 50%. So on this measure about a third of the way back to the Middle Ages.
https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/demograph...
js2
Modern rates range from 0.15% (Slovenia) to 10% (Afghanistan):
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/infant-mortalit...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...
null
zdragnar
Louis Pasteur's work establishing germ theory happened in the 1860's, and germ theory as the cause of disease wasn't really widely accepted until roughly this time period.
Blood letting (and its foundation the four humors) was still a thing when the Curies discovered radium.
We have come a long way indeed.
OkayPhysicist
I've recently come around on bloodletting. It seems barbarous, but there are some ailments that it really does help with. It wasn't a wild extrapolation for our ancestors to think it helped with other things. For example, gout: I recently had an appointment to give blood during a pretty bad gout flare, but I didn't want to reschedule so I hobbled over there, cane and all. By the time I was done, I felt better than I had in days. Looked it up, and turns out there's a not-insignificant amount of research on the subject.
I can totally imagine one of my gout-ridden relatives incidentally discovering that after losing a good chunk of blood (maybe a hunting accident, or a fuckup in a pottery workshop) that their foot stopped stabbing in pain. And then going "what else can I cure this way?".
And there's some new things that bloodletting is the only known treatment for. Like PFAS accumulation.
zdragnar
> And then going "what else can I cure this way?"
That's the difference. Bloodletting seems barbarous because it definitely didn't cure most things it was used for.
imzadi
I just read The Radium Girls, about the ̶w̶o̶m̶e̶n children who were hired to paint clock faces and military instruments with radium paint. 100s of young girls who died in their 20s and 30s because they were carelessly exposed to the radiation. It struck me that they were born around the same time as my own grandmother. We really have come a long way in a fairly short amount of time.
rtkwe
You're leaving out the horrific part where they weren't told about the known dangers and we routinely licking/shaping their brushes to get finer points which was a big source of the radium exposure.
neo-tac
They would also paint their faces with it, so when they went out at night they would glow. Crazy
HeyLaughingBoy
I agree with your point, but describing women in their 20s & 30s as "children" is rather demeaning.
imzadi
Most of the workers were 13 and 14 year old girls. They didn't die until their 20s and 30s.
sfn42
The way understood it they worked as children then died in their 20s and 30s.
tgv
Someone has to find out the hard way. It was a time when people to Röntgen pictures for fun.
Medieval? The 19th century was not a good place.
tobylane
My dad had childhood shoe shopping helped by xrays on the high street.
SiempreViernes
Radiation was treated different back then, look at these choice anecdotes.
> [A patent radioactive medicine]’s most loyal customer was Eben Byers, well known in Pittsburgh society as a wealthy manufacturer, sportsman, and playboy, approaching fifty years of age. Byers continued to take Radithor more desperately each year as his health failed, until in 1931 he entered a hospital, feeble and emaciated, his very breath radioactive. He did not have time to develop cancer but died of direct radiation injury within a few months.
> This was the first proven case of death from a patent radioactive medicine ... The public was not easily convinced that radioactivity could be dangerous at all [...] Doctors of sound reputation continued to use heavy doses of radiation to treat not only serious ailments but also cosmetic problems like warts or excess facial hair. Some even offered men temporary birth control through X-ray sterilization. As late as 1940 many hospital and laboratory workers were casually exposing themselves to radiation at levels far above the official guidelines.
[...]
> During the 1950s X-rays were often used to kill unwanted body hair, thousands of fluoroscopes in shoe Stores across the United States and Europe showed people the bones in their children’s feet; some hospitals routinely X-rayed infants simply to please parents with an inside view of their offspring.
From "Nuclear Fear; a history of images"
xattt
A shoe-fitting fluoroscope! I’m only half-joking, but one using terahertz radiation would be very handy to have while shoe-shopping with children.
Kids can’t reliably tell you the fit of their shoes, and some footwear doesn’t yield to the “thumb-at-toe” test.
(1) https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/when-xrays-were-all-the-rage-a...
pmcjones
An X-ray machine was in the shoe store when I was little, but my father told us not to let it be used on us.
red75prime
Limbs are much less sensitive to ionizing radiation, though. It's not good to play with in any case, of course.
lupusreal
I wish we still had this. It could be done using far less power today, and besides, it's not like baby boomers are all getting foot cancer.
londons_explore
Nearly everything you find in nature has such low levels of radioactivity that handling them isn't dangerous.
It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things that they become really risky. Unfortunately thats what Curie did.
kergonath
> It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things that they become really risky.
It’s a big factor, but not only. You don’t need to refine or enrich anything to have radon poisoning, for example.
Retric
It’s still similar. Radon concentrations in medieval dwellings would never reach the kind of concentrations you can see in modern homes because they leaked far more air. I wouldn’t necessarily call a tight home refining or enriching but it’s still dramatically increasing the concentration.
Tunnels and caves could still be problematic though there’s a lot of gasses that can cause problems in such environments.
signalToNose
Xkcd radiatorn chart:
HPsquared
Inhaling/ingesting concentrated radioactive substances is a big danger with that kind of thing. There are so many variables and it's hard to measure. Health effects depend on where it ends up within the body.
gmerc
Oh, we're going back there baby.
aconst
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
*Maria Skłodowska-Curie, as she herself insisted on being called. BBC should know better.
shawabawa3
any source on this? It's difficult to find any primary source on her opinion
All her written texts i can find after she moved to France she referred to herself as "Marie"
In her biography of Pierre Curie, she herself wrote of herself before she married "Mon nom est Marie Sklodowska"
here's a letter she wrote to the president and signed simply "Marie Curie" https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/letter-from-mar...
lo_zamoyski
You're focusing only on "Marie", whereas the greater emphasis should arguably be on "Skłodowska".
AFAIK, in 19th century France, a woman's legal name did not change after she married. She adopted her husband's name as a matter of usage, however. FWIW, I, too, have heard that Marie Skłodowska-Curie wished to make prominent her maiden name, perhaps in the double barrelled form (which is the way I've seen it many times in other languages).
misiek08
She even wanted to be Skłodowska, but then she wouldn’t be able to work as scientist and be respected. Curie is her husband's and that was the only way to be someone back then.
lo_zamoyski
This sounds false.
"Contrary to the practice of some other countries, French women do not legally change names when they marry; however, it is customary that they adopt their husband's name as a "usage name" for daily life." [0]
GJim
Regardless.
She is far more widely known as Marie Curie in the English speaking world. Using any other name would be confusing for most readers.
johannes1234321
As long as the "Curie" is kept the confusion is small, however serves as a vehicle to teach more about her and the time.
And after a while it won't be confusing at all.
closewith
The BBC are quite poor at this kind of thing, preferring their style guide to official names. The still use Czech Republic for Czechia, Republic of Ireland for Ireland, and Turkey for Türkiye.
Galanwe
> The still use Czech Republic for Czechia
Naive question but is Czechia a new name? The UN lists "Czech Republic" as official name and "Czechia" as the short name.
> Republic of Ireland for Ireland
To be fair, I don't think this is partisan, but rather just a way to differentiate the state from the island.
theelous3
As an Irish person, yes. Just calling Ireland Ireland when you are specifically being asked what country you are from for official purposes is a bit too orbital a view. Same goes for discussions from within a country holding contested ground sharing the name of a country with an island, blah blah.
It's a complicated subject, and nobody begrudges them the clarity.
Symbiote
If an article would use "Islamic Republic of Iran" then it should use "Czech Republic". If they would just write "Iran" then they should use "Czechia".
closewith
> Naive question but is Czechia a new name?
Not a new name, but Czechia has made a concerted effort since 2016 to have it used in place of the Czech Republic. Almost all international body and most media style guides have since acceded. The BBC lags.
> To be fair, I don't think this is partisan, but rather just a way to differentiate the state from the island.
No, like the British Isles, this is very much a controversial name and one to which the Irish Government formally objects. This is even the source of a diplomatic disagreement between the Irish Government and Wikipedia due to their style guide.
kergonath
> The still use Czech Republic for Czechia
Czech Republic is sill the formal name, right? Last time I checked it was overly formal, but not wrong to use it.
> Republic of Ireland for Ireland
Brits do this because of Northern Ireland (mostly for bad reasons, but still).
Countries are called differently depending on language and context. It’s fine.
GJim
> Brits do this because of Northern Ireland (mostly for bad reasons, but still).
This isn't specific to the British! ROI and NI refer to different countries on the island of Ireland.
I'm curious why you state "mostly for bad reasons"? (I assume you are American!)
damidekronik
Maybe we can at least fix the headline here, on hacker news
jaoane
I’m pretty sure they prefer “Kyiv”, though.
lo_zamoyski
Spelling is one thing, but no one pronounces it the Ukrainian way (ˈkɪjiu̯) which is somewhat torturous for non-Ukrainian speakers. The best common pronunciation in English that more or less respects English phonetic patterns IMO is "KEE-iv".
Still, people need to respect the fact that each language can create their own variants. English speakers are under no obligation to call Wales "Cymru" or Finland "Suomi". It's fine.
unstablediffusi
>Czech Republic for Czechia
why single it out? even the countries that use (mostly) latin alphabet don't necessary have the same name in english - Poland is Polska, Lithuania is Lietuva, Estonia is Eesti, Finland is Suomi, etc. And latinizations/romanizations are often wildly inaccurate - Ukraine is actually Ukraina, Russia is actually Rossia, and the english pronunciations are completely wrong. Japan is Nihon. etc etc.
>Republic of Ireland for Ireland
there are two irelands, fyi
>Türkiye
no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and copypasting it. you might as well insist on using hieroglyphs for CJK things
closewith
> Czechia
> why single it out?
Because the country of Czechia has asked the English-speaking world to refer to it that way.
> there are two irelands, fyi
There is Ireland, the island of Ireland, and Northern Ireland. Republic of Ireland refers to the soccer team and nothing else, FYI.
The country of Ireland has also requested that the English speaking world use its name, Ireland and specifically not the Republic of Ireland.
> no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and copypasting it. you might as well insist on using hieroglyphs for CJK things
Ah, so we'll just decide to rename countries with inconvenient letters. How very colonial of you.
workfromspace
> no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and copypasting it. you might as well insist on using hieroglyphs for CJK things
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ü#Letter_Ü
> The letter Ü is present in the Hungarian, Turkish, Uyghur Latin, Estonian, Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Kazakh Latin and Tatar Latin alphabets
I see and generally agree with your point, however that "no one" is approx. 120 million people. Just saying.
shmeano
Would it be possible to make a radioactivity camera? I guess not because it doesn’t refract?
voidUpdate
From my limited knowledge, itwould be very hard to make it react to all types of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) since they penetrate differently and interact with forces differently. You could potentially make a magnetic "lens" that would interact with alpha and beta particles, but gamma rays would ignore it.
The best way I can think of to make a "radiation camera" is similar to how you can make a "wifi camera", by hooking up a radiation detector to a pan-tilt mechanism, and moving it around very slowly and sampling the amount of radiation detected at each point. Essentially a single pixel "camera" that you have to move around to take a full picture. However, you'd also have to shield the detector from any radioactivity coming from directions that it's not pointed in, which is especially hard if you're trying to capture gamma rays, since they like to penetrate through everything. Its like if light could leak into the side of a normal camera, you'd get rubbish photos
dmurray
Why would it have to be a single pixel instead of an array of sensors like any digital camera?
Sure, we probably can't make Geiger counters in a form factor that allows an array of a million of them in a handheld device, but maybe 20x16 or something?
voidUpdate
I mean you could make that work, but you'd have to shield between all of the detectors so that you don't get the radiation equivalent of bloom on your pictures. If you have only one, it'll be easier to shield, in my head anyway
perihelions
There's viable optics up through x-rays; though they don't refract, they can still reflect at shallow angles,
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/xmm-newton/technical-details-...
SiempreViernes
Depends on the energy ranges and particle types you are interested in.
For instance we routinely take plenty of x-ray images, though there is fortunately not a lot of stuff just lying around that are bright enough x-ray sources to properly expose standard x-ray detectors.
Detecting electrons or protons (beta and alpha radiation) in such a way that you can work out their arrival direction is also doable, but the equipment is fairly bulky and you tend to have to wait a long time to accumulate enough detections to see anything.
MisterTea
While a sensor array of tiny/microscopic Geiger–Müller tubes sounds practical, focusing the particles to generate an image on that sensor is not. There is no lens that can simultaneously focus all the different types of particles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Directly_io...
adrian_b
You could make a pin-point camera with an array of detectors that will receive thus only the radiation coming from the direction fixed by the positions of the aperture and of the detector.
However that might not work well because the material around the pin-point aperture might not absorb sufficiently the rays coming from different directions and it cannot be made thick.
So what may work better is to make the detector array in the form of a compound arthropod eye, where each detector is at the bottom of a long tube whose walls absorb the rays coming from any other direction except its axis.
In practice, besides trying to absorb the rays coming from different directions, preventing them to reach the detector, for high-energy rays there is the alternative to use 2 or more collinear detectors for each direction (corresponding to an image pixel). A high-energy particle or photon will pass through all collinear detectors, causing simultaneous pulses at their outputs. Whenever such pulses are not simultaneous, they are discarded, because they correspond to rays coming from another direction than intended for that pixel. The accumulated count of filtered pulses per some time interval will give the luminosity of the corresponding image pixel.
> 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.