Marie Curie

Born today in Warsaw in 1867 was Marie Curie who would become a world renowned scientist for her studies in radioactivity. In the last years of my father's life he worked either in the area of exploration for and later the mining of uranium. His work covered much of Western Colorado and Eastern Utah. When he died he was working in a mine near Moab, Utah.

So what connection does this have with Marie Curie? In the early 1900s Marie Curie came to Western Colorado to get radium, which is a byproduct of Uranium. It was from this area that she got the materials for her experiments. Marie Curie would eventually die of radiation poisoning because at that time the dangers associated with radium and uranium were unknown.

For good or ill, Marie Curie made a major contribution to the life of the world.