The Notebooks That Still Glow

Marie Curie spent years in a cramped Paris laboratory, hunched over vials of pitchblende, isolating the element she would name radium. She worked so closely with the substance that it seeped into everything — her lab coat, her furniture, her personal papers. Today, more than a century later, her notebooks are stored in lead-lined boxes at France's Bibliotheque nationale. Researchers who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing and sign a liability waiver.…