r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NotTukTukPirate • 8h ago
Image Albert Einstein and Marie Curie discussing near a lake, 1929
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u/MyVeryUniqueName1 8h ago
Probably talking about literally anything other than physics.
Albert: “Gum’s gotten mintier lately. Have you noticed?”
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u/mcmcc 8h ago
Marie: "All I can taste is radium."
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u/RainyRat 7h ago
That's not actually film grain in the photo, it's caused by all the ionising radiation from Dr. Curie.
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u/TheeAntelope 5h ago
Dr. Curie was so hot!
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u/mycatisabrat 8h ago
...and by the way I believe it is e=MC Hammer."
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u/deadspacekillers 7h ago
That would release a legit amount of energy. Maybe even 2 legit.
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u/Somnambulist815 7h ago
"Vhat ist spearmint? Ist that different from regular mint?"
"My blood is glowing green, albert"
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u/NoFuel1197 3h ago
I̸͇͍͕̗͙͍̬͉̹̿ͅͅ’̷̹̩̳͗̈͆͗̊̀͗͛͝m̴̠̪̣̠̲͇̜̹̥͎͉̗̫̬͗̆̆̐̾̽͂̓̌̕ ̵̰͔͔͎̟̇͐͒̓̿͐̒̒̆̚͝s̵͍̖̰͊͒͝ǫ̸̟̙̝͉͍̲͌̿̎̊̈́͐̚r̶̨̧̛̦̖̥͚̽̐r̶̨̡̧͖̞̻̲̳͇̗̳̄́͂̽y̵̗̰̋̀͋́̒͌̓̆̌̚,̵̗̉͜ ̴̬͉̦͉͓̙͖̯̰̾̀̾̓̀́̈́̏̀͊̀̌ͅA̸̦̣̹̿͗́̄̈́̄̈͜͝l̴̨̧̬̤̲̣͎̱͖̠͉̜͖̖̑͋̅̏͑͌̿͒̐̈́̍̏͗̕ḇ̵̢̖̮̺͇̟͇̹͈͉̳̦̯̏̐̊̓́̐̀̃̓̈́͂̚e̸͇͛̏́͗͑̽̀͑̐̕r̶̢̲͍̹͈͎̞͎̱̈́̎̓͑̓̈́͂̒̅̀̌́̓̕t̸̛̠̠̦̿̈́̔̿̀̌̈͗͆̽͑̈́̚.̶̼̞̻̠̯̝̬͐̾̇͜͝
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u/BobbyTheBrainHeenan 7h ago
"What happened with Legos? They used to be simple. Oh come on, I know you know what I’m talking about. Legos were simple. Something happened out here while I was inside. Harry Potter Legos, Star Wars Legos, complicated kits, tiny little blocks. I mean I’m not saying its bad I just wanna know what happened."
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u/MyVeryUniqueName1 7h ago
Whoa, Oreo really upped its game while I was in prison. It's like a fat kid's fever dream. Cinnamon bun Oreos? Technology.
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u/SmallBallsTallFalls 7h ago
Most underrated line from Community (maybe idk i cant really remember anything anymore im 30)
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u/masterwolfe 4h ago
Yep, said by the late Michael Kenneth Williams, same actor who played Omar in The Wire.
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u/s_burr 7h ago
Albert: do you remember the taste of fresh strawberries with cream Mrs Curie?
Marie: " I dont remember the taste of food Albert"
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u/nifty-necromancer 5h ago
Marie: “Albert, you’ve got a big titty girl back home waiting to marry you.”
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u/AliensVSCryptids 7h ago
I had more irrelevant and often childish conversations with my PhD cohort than any other group of people in my life.
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u/Gastroid 6h ago
And Einstein was known to be particularly silly. He only put his serious cap on for published papers. A true academic.
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u/scheisse_grubs 5h ago
Albert: “Also, FYI, I don't technically have a hearing problem, but sometimes when there's a lot of noises occurring at the same time I'll hear them as one big jumble. Again, it's not that I can't hear, because that's false, I can. I just can't distinguish between everything I'm hearing.”
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u/MiyagiJunior 8h ago
I live in Princeton. One of my neighbors is in his 70s (I believe) and has lived here his whole life. He told me that as a young kid, he would sometimes see Einstein downtown, and Einstein would ruffle up his hair. It was cool to meet someone who had an actual first hand encounter with such an iconic person, even if such a minor encounter.
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u/FblthpLives 6h ago
There is a fireplace at Princeton University with an inscription of a quote from Einstein to commemorate his time there and at the Institute of Advanced Studies. I remember the first time I saw it and thinking how cool it was. I hope one day to show it to my daughter, who is about to start an MSc in nuclear and particle physics.
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u/jamescb819 2h ago
And the inscription said…
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u/FblthpLives 2h ago edited 2h ago
"Raffiniert is der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist Er nicht"
The fireplace is in the common room in the original Fine Hall (now Jones Hall), the previous home of the math department before the new Fine Hall was constructed.
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u/Ne_zievereir 4h ago edited 1h ago
My great-grandfather lived near the Belgian coast. Einstein also lived there a short while after he left Germany, when the Nazis came to power. My great-grandfather liked to tell the story that he once met Einstein at the tram station, who couldn't figure out the time table, and my great-grandfather had to explain it to him.
No idea if it's true, but it's a good story, lol.
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u/Acrobatic_Shape_8259 3h ago
«Oh so you can’t figure out the time table…. Maybe it’s all too relative for you?»
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u/Tight_Contact_9976 8h ago
Fun fact, Einstein had likely quit smoking by this point. He just kept a pipe in his mouth because it calmed him and helped him focus.
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u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 5h ago
Probably the same reason why people chew pen caps or keep gum after quitting. The habit is also manual and oral
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u/RandomRedditReader 4h ago
I knew a lot of smokers in elementary school I guess.
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u/CartoonistAny4349 4h ago
Not remotely the same level of health hazard, but I chew gum pretty much constantly to keep from biting my nails.
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u/Revolver_Boxelot 4h ago
My dad did the same thing for a while. Then he started smoking the pipe again lol. Its an unnecessary temptation.
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u/Nilahit 8h ago
Damn, Curie was so radioactive the film deteriorated
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u/octoreadit 8h ago edited 8h ago
Little known fact: Albert's watch lost its glow, so that's why he was meeting her, to get it recharged.
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u/shiner820 8h ago
No, he just liked her cause she was so hot.
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u/MadMax0526 8h ago
I thought it was cause of her radiant persona.
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u/GarlicRiver 7h ago
She's to die for
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u/MadMax0526 6h ago
I don't know about that, but she could certainly light up a room.
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake 3h ago
At the very least you might find her notes illuminating.
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u/raddaya 6h ago
You joke but Curie's body is legitimately so radioactive they keep it in a lead coffin. Many of her personal books and belongings are kept in lead lined boxes too
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u/banspoonguard 4h ago
While Curie certainly had more radionuclides than your average corpse, lead coffins are not as novel as you might think.
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u/Dorkamundo 7h ago
I love how in Clone High, a show about a secret government project to clone historical figures and put them in high school together included Marie Curie as a very mutated dance instructor.
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u/kayemenofour 4h ago
Her remains are within the Pantheon in Paris
Not just because of her contributions to science, but they also power half the city.
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u/WhiteRed14 8h ago
"Marie Curie" You have just angered every Pole in the vicinity lol
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u/Capable_Tumbleweed34 8h ago edited 3h ago
Tactical pierogi have been deployed
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u/Flamesparkz 8h ago
It feels so surreal knowing that one of the most intellectual people who has ever lived looks just like a normal person like everyone else. It would have been so cool to meet him in person and ask questions. R.I.P Albert Einstein.
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u/Existing_Set2100 8h ago
Einstein apparently was quite normal too, in general behavior and demeanor. Some of his fellow colleagues were a bit more… off.
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u/Even_Butterfly2000 7h ago
Academia will do that.
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u/Existing_Set2100 7h ago
The strangest human being you will ever meet in life has a PhD in something.
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u/Nurgle_Marine_Sharts 2h ago
Fucking facts lol, it's SO RARE to meet a PhD who isn't super odd.
I also find they are usually kind of abrasive and self-centered (but those are primarily the ones who stay in academia long term).
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u/CartoonistAny4349 4h ago
It's gotta be physics. Physicists just have a different way of thinking from anyone I've ever met.
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u/Rex_Mundi 7h ago
Neils Bohr was arguing with Einstein about a rewriting of the laws of physics. "It is wrong to think the task of physics is to find out how nature is," Bohr stated.
Einstein angrily disagreed, slamming Bohr famously by stating: "Deine Mutter ist so massig, ich kann die Leute hinter ihr stehen sehen." (Your mother is so massive, I can see the people standing behind her.)
This led to his theory of gravitational lensing.
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u/Existing_Set2100 7h ago
“Ass so fat you can see it from the front.”
- Albert Einstein on black holes
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u/IDNWID_1900 5h ago
My cousin's boyfriend received the Young Experimental Physicist Prize of the EPS (I am not saying the year, that would be too much info).
He is kind of... special. Really hard to talk to him, despite that I am a civil engineer and also beign diagnosed with Level 1 of ASD.
One time we were sitting at the same table at a wedding, and probably at the 3rd hour of the event he just stand up and said "I am going home, I'd rather be at home with my dog" and he just left.
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u/Great_Detective_6387 5h ago
He’s more polite than me. I don’t even announce it, lest I now have to say goodbye to two dozen people on my way out.
I just do the Irish goodbye.
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u/CrimsonAntifascist 5h ago
I highly recommend his essay "Why Socialism" in the magazine Monthly Review.
As with many brilliant people, his beliefs were washed down after his death.
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u/CloudKitchen1924 6h ago
Like Richard Feynman. His hobbies included moonlighting as an artist, playing the bongos in an orchestra, doing diplomatic government work, refusing to use eye protection during nuclear tests, picking locks, breaking into safes, and being violent towards people. Very eccentric guy
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u/BlackEyeRed 8h ago
She was also very special.
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u/HotRodZA 7h ago
The only person in history to get 2 Nobel prizes in 2 seperate scientific fields - chemistry and physics. She was fantastic!
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u/BankingDuncan 7h ago
Also the mother of Irène Joliot-Curie, 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
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u/Stewart_Games 6h ago
Madame Curie was the first woman to win a nobel prize in chemistry. And Madame Curie was the second woman to win a nobel prize in chemistry.
And as a side note, to this day every descendant of Marie and Pierre Curie has studied chemistry, biology, or physics, forming the Curie science dynasty
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u/BootyfulBumrah 5h ago
I see your Curie family and raise you the Bernoulli family
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u/FblthpLives 6h ago
According to the Curie museum, Irène is credited with taking this photograph: https://www.aip.org/library/when-marie-went-arm-in-arm-with-albert
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u/FullHouse222 7h ago
My high school chem teacher was a woman named Mrs. Virginia. Marie Curie was her favorite subject back in the day and it's honestly so cool learning about the crazy things she discovered.
That said, Curie is also 100% a psychopath lol. Who the fuck ingests radium??? Really need some of these psychos who's willing to do absolutely bat shit insane things to progress human knowledge though I guess.
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u/sensitivum 7h ago
Hahaha yeah, the comment doesn’t even acknowledge her at all, so weird. It really made me do a double take.
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u/MogosTheFirst 8h ago
There people at the same level as Einstein that you might've passed by street in your lifetime.
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u/Particular-Sample91 7h ago
Definitely. Not me though, unless you’re in Africa, then there’s a chance you might’ve passed by me
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 6h ago
There are people as intelligent as Einstein walking among us, but I doubt many of us have ever been near someone who completely revolutionized a massive branch of science like Einstein did.
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u/WeakProfessional2007 7h ago edited 7h ago
Absolutely bizarre to just totally pass over Curie. Literally the only person in history to receive two Nobel prizes in 2 different fields.
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u/deadspacekillers 7h ago
She never got the same historical PR because she's a woman.
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u/WeakProfessional2007 7h ago
Yep. And clearly the effect of misogyny is persistent.
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u/DudeIAm-blank- 8h ago
Man I know jack shit about math and I wanna meet Euler, potentially just to annoy him with math thats rudimentary af
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u/ruinevil 7h ago
Euler was surprisingly a pleasant person. Gauss, on the other hand, was a notorious asshole.
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u/DudeIAm-blank- 7h ago
Yeah I read somewhere that he was a kind man. I sometimes wonder how much progress we would make in math/physics if all the greats could talk and work together for like a year. Lol
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u/blahbruhla 8h ago
Because we're all people lol (it always baffles me... Was he supposed to be green? Was he supposed to giant? Etc) ... We're all human beings. Some are smarter than others is all. There are a lot of very intelligent and talented people walking among us, one might have served you coffee this morning.
I'm a strong believer that today's Einsteins exist but the conditions were not ideal for them to strive, or receive a similar spotlight. It just seems odd how that's not a possibility when the world population basically grew 4 times from when Einstein was alive PLUS we have way more accessible content to learn from... Plus, it's harder to create new theories when many of them already exist.
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u/dickallcocksofandros 8h ago
Mozart would randomly start stimming by acting like a cat by meowing and jumping around, I'm pretty sure that's what they meant.
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u/Ingenrollsroyce 8h ago
There are tons of people that he doesn't look like, he does look like Einstein though
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u/deadspacekillers 7h ago edited 7h ago
Oh, for a second I thought you were talking about Marie Skłodowska-Curie. She was arguably smarter than he was. She had 2 Nobel prizes to his one, and she remains the only person in history to receive 2 Nobel prizes in two distinct scientific fields. She's just hasn't had the same historical PR because she's a woman.
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u/aetius476 6h ago
I would agree if it were anyone but Einstein. Curie was a towering genius and unquestionably in the upper elite of modern science, but Einstein was... Einstein. There's a reason his name supplanted Newton's as the moniker for genius. His miracle year is a unparalleled feat in the history of science. Imagine developing special relativity and mass-energy equivalence in the same year, and neither is even the paper you wrote that year that won you the Nobel Prize. His paper on Brownian motion, which would be a career defining achievement for any other physicist, didn't even make the podium of Einstein's accomplishments in a single calendar year. Then a decade later he says "Special relativity isn't good enough" and drops General relativity, which has stood for more than a century as one of the twin pillars of modern physics.
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u/ChronicBuzz187 8h ago
It would have been so cool to meet him in person and ask questions.
Haha, same. Always thought it would be great to have a personal physicist I can bother with all the stupid questions my stupid brains comes up with regularly, up to a point where they'd eventually go "Please, stop, I beg you, I can't take any more of these".
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u/kartu3 8h ago
It feels so surreal knowing that one of the most intellectual people who has ever lived looks just like a normal person like everyone else.
Feynman scored 125 in a formal IQ test at college. (no, he wasn't a normal kid even back then).
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u/dudavocado__ 8h ago
125 is…not especially impressive though? Surely that number must be higher in his case!!
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u/MobileJob1521 8h ago
Knowing Feynman, he probably deliberately answered a few questions incorrectly so they wouldn’t think he was a genius and they’d leave him alone.
Guy had the kind of FAFO mischievousness that you only get in exceptionally bright people, the man delighted in the fuck around bit.
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u/Merdoc83 8h ago
I'll be that guy and say, her name isn't just "the wife of Curie", she was Maria Skłodowska. One of the biggest minds that ever walked this planet. The only person, not just betwen women but among everyone, in history to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines - in just 66 years of a lifetime.
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u/Capable_Tumbleweed34 8h ago
Maria Skłodowska
Nah she was French, that name sounds polish or something, can't be right, she's definitelly Marie Curie, famous French genius. (/s)
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u/NotTukTukPirate 8h ago edited 8h ago
I mean, I understand that the Polish are proud that she is polish and that they are usually upset that her maiden name is left out or disregarded... But she was married. If someone is married and then becomes famous for something, they don't usually go by their maiden name.
But definitely aggravating when people say she's French!
Edit: I was, in fact, wrong. She legally and professionally signed her name as Marie Skłodowska-Curie.
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u/Mediocre_Strawberry5 8h ago
She continued to use both surnames after her marriage (her Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to a “Marie Skłodowska Curie”) and was very proud of her polish heritage, so it’s likely she would have preferred to be remembered as Marie Skłodowska Curie.
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u/Firebart3q 8h ago
Except she went by both. Maria Skłodowska Curie. There are lots of famous People that go by both surnames. Its just that polish is I guess less normalised than french, so most just didnt bother with pronounciation and it stuck this way. Yall can pronounce gentrification, so yall can pronounce Skłodowska (zkwodovskah). (Not a flame towards you, just speaking in general)
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u/NotTukTukPirate 8h ago
Wow, I actually didn't even know that. Which makes even more sense why some polish people are upset by her name being mislabeled so often!
Thanks for educating me on this!
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u/Lua-Ma 8h ago edited 7h ago
My brain used to lie to me that Marie Curie lived way before that era, like in the early 1800s or something.
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u/eagleshark 7h ago
This picture is 1929.
Marie Curie died in 1934, of aplastic anaemia likely from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I.
Damnnn.
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u/FblthpLives 6h ago
In all likelihood, the picture was taken sometime between July 23 and July 29, 1924: https://www.aip.org/library/when-marie-went-arm-in-arm-with-albert
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u/snaresamn 6h ago
Her scientific notebooks are stored in lead containers and you have to sign a waiver to view them because they're still so irradiated.
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u/NotTukTukPirate 8h ago edited 8h ago
Yeah it's actually mind boggling how some of humanity's biggest and most amazing discoveries have only been in the last century.
The telescoping effect of our intellectual evolution, in the past ~100 years, is fascinating.
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u/RaymondBeaumont 5h ago
when curie discovered radioactivity, germ theory was just getting to be the standard and there were still a lot of doctors that were fighting the idea.
the last 130 years have been pretty insane when it comes to things we consider basic knowledge.
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u/okobooboo 8h ago edited 7h ago
Full name: Maria Skłodowska-Curie.
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u/Defiant_Restaurant61 7h ago
Wrong, it's "Skłodowska-Curie", not Curie-Skłodowska.
That's how she signed it when she didn't go by Marie Curie.
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u/Sensitive_Ad_3053 8h ago
A very innocent question, in 2026 do we have scientists like these two that will make a difference for years to come? I know I don't follow science journals and stuff like that but wondering. The last incredibly intelligent person I heard about was Stephen Hawkings.. Don't chew me out for just wondering
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u/Capable_Tumbleweed34 8h ago
We have many, many more minds on their level than in this period. The difference is that the science is incredibly more complex now. Advances that once took a bright mind to figure out through logical thinking, now require hundreds/thousands of minds expert in varied fields with increasingly expensive tech to demonstrate.
With this reality comes the fact that outlying intellectual figures become far less visible, as they work as part of whole research teams who share the recognition of their advances.
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u/NaNaNaNaNa86 8h ago
It's difficult to say when their work has yet to be fully explored and built upon. Currently, I'd put James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo right up at the top for their work in immunotherapy. Other recent game changers are Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for isolating Graphene. Every generation will have scientists that are looked upon as geniuses by our descendants.
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u/soccerfut1 6h ago
Couldn’t ever take Marie Curie to Church. She was militantly agnostic and she would mumble counterpoints through the service; it just became such a critical mass.
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u/The_grand_ayatollah 7h ago
I was going to make a joke, but then I realized I have too much respect for both of them to make a joke.
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u/joshcam 8h ago
What would it be like if these minds were here today? Would they be as intelligent or more intelligent as they were in their own time or would today affect them negatively? I wonder.
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u/idinarouill 7h ago
People a century or ten centuries ago were just as intelligent as we are. We have greater access to culture, education, and energy (transportation, household appliances, digital backup), which creates the illusion of intellectual superiority.
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u/smish_my_oogie 7h ago
I wouldn't have been able to understand most of what they said, but I would have loved to listen in.
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u/MabelRed 7h ago
“Yeah, so, ya know that shiny rock you used to diagnose and treat WW1 soldiers? Immah put it in a bomb”
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u/Obvious-Profit-5597 8h ago
Feels like that Oppenheimer scene where they discuss the process of fission and fusion.