Journals STILL Radioactive

"A sculpture of Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize winning discoverer of radiactivity, holding 1 gram of radium, made from needle felted wool. This would make the perfect present for a scientist, physicist, chemist, oncology nurse, X Ray operator, wannabee Nobel Prize winner, feminist - the list is endless!

I discovered, while doing a bit of research on Marie Curie, that I really didn't know much about her, and she is absolutely fascinating. She was not only a woman doing groundbreaking scientific research and a multiple Nobel Prize winner, but also a working Mum - at a time when women in Britain were still fighting for the right to vote. The American Institute of Physics has a nice biography of her, if you're interested to find out more about this amazing woman http://www.aip.org/history/curie/

I have chosen to show her holding a gram of radium, because this is one of the two elements she discovered (the other is polonium). 1 gram is all the radium she had - but because the element is so radioactive it was enough for many many experiments. Also, it wasn't until after she died that the extent of the damage that radioactive materials do was understood. She carried out most of her research without any protection from radiation.

Apparently she preferred to wear black, as it didn't show the dirt from working in a lab.

Marie Curie will be created by stabbing wool repeatedly with a barbed needle. She will be tightly felted, but rough handling may loosen hairs. Her 1 gram of radium is not radioactive, so no need to wear protective clothing (it is actually only pretend radium, made from wool. If you look closely you can see it emits light, in the form of little fluffy bits of wool!). It will take me about two weeks to make her."

Found at TheGreedyCrocodile's Etsy shop.