Marie Curie was devoted to science, determined to discover the medical possibilities for radiation. Working with radium slowly affected her health. Curie would often become ill, a result of radiation sickness. Painful burning lesions would appear on her hands and face, caused by handling radioactive material. Eventually, her vision was impaired; the only way she continued to work was by wearing thick lensed glasses and taping large color coded signs on her laboratory instruments. Yet, through this painstaking effort, the x-ray and early treatments for cancer were discovered. Marie Curie, the winner of two Nobel prizes for discovering radium and radioactivity, died of radiation poisoning in the summer of 1934 at the age of 66.

In the closing months of her life, realizing she was ill, Marie…