Marie Curie
Near the 1920s, Skłodowska-Curie and many of her colleagues began to suffer from symptoms of cancer. Skłodowska-Curie began to lose her sight. Cataract surgeries to try to bring back her sight did not help. Skłodowska-Curie knew that the element (radium) she discovered might have been causing the symptoms, but she did not want to admit it to herself or others. In the early 1930s, Skłodowska-Curie’s health started to quickly get worse. Doctors diagnosed her with pernicious anemia. Pernicious anemia is a blood anemia that happens when someone is overly exposed to radiation. The doctors didn’t tell the public or Skłodowska-Curie herself what was going on. On July 4, 1934, at 66 years old, she died in a Sanitorium at the French Alps. She was then buried next to her husband in Sceaux, France. Maria Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist best known for her work on radioactivity; however, she also discovered the elements polonium and radium. She was awarded two Nobel Prizes — one in physics which she won jointly with her husband and Henri Becquerel, and another in chemistry — and was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. She is still one of only four people (along with Linus Pauling, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger) to accomplish that feat. Skłodowska-Curie is responsible for establishing the theory of radioactivity, but unfortunately she unwittingly also discovered the fatal effect radioactivity can have on your health; she died on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure.