A Quote by Marie Curie

Pierre Curie voluntarily exposed his arm to the action of radium for several hours. This resulted in damage resembling a burn that developed progressively and required several months to heal. Henri Becquerel had by accident a similar burn as a result of carrying in his vest pocket a glass tube containing radium salt. He came to tell us of this evil effect of radium, exclaiming in a manner at once delighted and annoyed: "I love it, but I owe it a grudge."

Marie Curie

Quote Topics

Accident Action Annoyed Arm Burn Came Carrying Containing Damage Delighted Developed Effect Evil Exposed Glass Grudge Had Heal His Hours Love Manner Months Once Owe Pocket Required Result Salt Several Similar Tell Tube Us Vest Voluntarily

Quote Author

Marie Curie
Polish - Scientist
November 7, 1867 - July 4, 1934

Radium, discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, was especially popular: the 'it' element of its day. Radium glows an eerie blue-green in the dark, giving off light for years without any apparent power source. People had never seen anything like it.

Sam Kean

Probably if half a kilogram [of radium] were in a bottle on that table it would kill us all. It would almost certainly destroy our sight and burn our skins to such an extent that we could not survive. The smallest bit placed on one's arm would produce a blister which it would need months to heal.

William Crookes

The radiation of radium was "contagious"-Contagious like a persistent scent or a disease. It was impossible for an object, a plant, an animal or a person to be left near a tube of radium without immediately acquiring a notable "activity" which a sensitive apparatus could detect.

Eve Curie

Doctors' investment in radium...the price of radium increased 1,000% when they began to use it on cancer victims.

Erland Josephson

Madame Curie didn't stumble upon radium by accident. She searched and experimented and sweated and suffered years before she found it. Success rarely is an accident.

B. C. Forbes

Thus the radio elements formed strange and cruel families in which each member was created by spontaneous transformation of the mother substance: radium was a "descendant" of uranium, polonium a descendant of radium.

Eve Curie

In chemical terms, radium differs little from barium; the salts of these two elements are isomorphic, while those of radium are usually less soluble than the barium salts.

Marie Curie

Gertrude Stein ... the Madame Curie of language. Because in her deep research she has crushed thousands of tons of matter to extract the radium of the word.

Mina Loy

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

Marie Curie

We Americans are mildly interested, of course, in reading about the discovery of radium by Madame Curie, but what we really yearn to know is the name of the uncommemorated French female who first mixed a sauce bearnaise.

Frank Crowninshield

I met Pierre Curie for the first time in the spring of the year 1894... A Polish physicist whom I knew, and who was a great admirer of Pierre Curie, one day invited us together to spend the evening with himself and his wife.

Marie Curie

Certein bodies... become luminous when heated. Their luminosity disappears after some time, but the capacity of becoming luminous afresh through heat is restored to them by the action of a spark, and also by the action of radium.

Marie Curie

Radium is not to enrich any one. It is an element; it is for all people.

Marie Curie

Radium could be very dangerous in criminal hands.