Scientists Who Paid with Their Lives

Marie Curie was born in 1867. She overcame huge obstacles growing up as a woman in the 19th century. Curie pursued education hard to become a major scientist. She earned her PhD by studying uranium. She quickly found that uranium rays charge the air they pass through. She also saw that the number of rays from uranium depends on the uranium amount, not the chemical reaction.

Curie won a Nobel prize later. She became the first female professor at the University of Paris. Sadly, she also died from aplastic anemia, a bone marrow disease likely caused by radioactivity she exposed to during her career.Radioactivity caused the aplastic anemia Curie succumbed to during her career.Curie had been exposed to this radioactivity during her career.

Alexander Bogdanov was a fascinating person. He was a close friend of Vladimir Lenin. Bogdanov wrote science fiction, wrote poetry, and was a doctor obsessed with hematology.

Bogdanov theorized he could become immortal through blood transfusions. This is not real, but in the 1920s, people learned that the hard way. Bogdanov took blood after blood, claiming each one improved him.Bogdanov swapped blood with a student suffering from malaria.Bogdanov died.

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, USGS volcanologist David A. Johnston was the first scientist to warn people about the disaster. Johnston studied extinct calderas in Colorado. He also studied ash flows during the 1912 eruption of Mount Katmai in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.The eruption of Mount St. Helens occurred in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.Before the Mount St. Helens blast, Johnston believed volcanic activity was still possible on the mountain. He took part in dangerous on-site monitoring. Johnston told journalists it felt like standing next to a dynamite keg with the fuse lit.Johnston described the feeling as standing next to a dynamite keg with the fuse lit.After the volcano blast overcame Johnston and his trailer, he relayed this before his radio went silent: "

Johnston relayed this after the volcano blast overcame him and his trailer: "Johnston radioed, "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"Johnston shouted, "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"

Dian Fossey studied gorillas in their native Rwanda forests. These forests presented many dangers. Gorillas could act aggressively, but the animals did not threaten the primatologist and anthropologist who studied gorillas for 18 years. Humans posed the real danger to her and her research.

In 1985, Fossey was murdered in her cabin in the Virunga Mountains, Rwanda. A Rwanda court found that Wayne McGuire, her research assistant, killed Fossey.They tried Wayne McGuire in absentia.McGuire left for the United States before the trial happened. Since America and Rwanda have no extradition policy, McGuire served no time for the murder. Many people doubt McGuire's guilt. They believe poachers, who often interrupted Fossey's research, actually killed her.

This Canadian physicist and chemist worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was more than just a lab nerd. At King's college, he played amateur boxer. He won the school's bantamweight championship before fighting in the Spanish Civil War for fun. He was a real daredevil; working on the atomic bomb likely didn't bother him.

While testing a fission reaction at Los Alamos, Slotin accidentally caused a "prompt critical" reaction and a burst of hard radiation. People rushed him to the hospital. Nine days after this intense radiation exposure, he started experiencing radiation-influenced traumas.Slotin experienced a series of radiation-influenced traumas.These traumas included severe diarrhea, reduced urine output, swollen hands, erythema, large blisters on his body, intestinal paralysis, and gangrene. Internal radiation burns covered his whole body; one medical expert called it a “three-dimensional sunburn.”

Karen Wetterhahn taught chemistry at Dartmouth College, NH. She studied toxic metal exposure, specifically how mercury ions interact with DNA repair proteins.Mercury ions interact with DNA repair proteins.Karen Wetterhahn knew the chemicals she studied were toxic. She thought she took all safety steps for a safe testing area. Before she died, Wetterhahn remembered spilling a drop or two of dimethylmercury on her gloved hand. Tests later showed this spilled substance penetrated the glove and started entering her skin in fifteen seconds. Three months after that spill, Wetterhahn showed signs of severe mercury poisoning. Two months later, doctors admitted her to the hospital. They found the single dimethylmercury exposure raised her blood mercury level to 4,000 micrograms per liter—80 times the toxic limit. Wetterhahn died less than a year following that single exposure to the poison.

Daghlian started working on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos while still a Purdue University graduate student in 1944. What should have been a big career boost for the scientist turned into his worst decision. While trying to build a neutron reflector, Daghlian stacked nine 9.7 lb tungsten carbide bricks around a plutonium core.He dropped one of the bricks.This dropped brick made the core critical. Daghlian got a radiation dose that put him in a coma. He died 25 days after the accident.Daghlian was the first known fatality caused by a criticality accident.The accident caused a criticality event.

Harold Maxwell-Lefroy became an entomologist in the early 1900s. He invented the first version of Raid. He studied bugs in India. He became thefirst Imperial Entomologist.- This is cool, but also kind of awful.

In the early 1920s, Lefroy returned to England. He handled a beetle infestation at Westminster Hall, next to the Houses of Parliament. He began figuring out which chemicals killed bugs in spectacular ways. His success ended fast. He accidentally killed himself in his lab by breathing ina lethal amount of Lewisite.Harold Maxwell-Lefroy is listed among the scientists who paid with their lives.

Northrop acted likeDoctor Doolittle, minus talking to animals. He was a zoologist who specificallystudied marine invertebrates.He studied marine invertebrates in Eastport, ME, and Grand Manan in the Bahamas. Most of his work appeared later in the bookJohn Isaiah Northrop worked in Eastport, ME, and Grand Manan in the Bahamas. Most of his work appeared later in the book.His book was titled "A Naturalist in the Bahamas".The book appeared in 1910. Two weeks before his son's birth in Yonkers, NY, an accident at the Columbia School of Mines zoology museum caused an explosion and fire.that killed Northrop.. His wife later worked with Columbia's Zoology department. She introduced nature studies into New York school curriculums.

Jack Parsons was likely one of the coolest scientists who walked the Earth. He built rockets and helped create film special effects. He followed Aleister Crowley.who hung out with L. Ron Hubbard.. Parsons lacked formal education. However, Parsons had an "uninhibited and fruitful imagination" when making rockets. He kept his partners focused on building actual rocket engines,not just solving equations on paper."..

Parsons had political issues and distrusted the US government (he never technically worked for it). He moved to Mexico for a time, setting up an explosives factory for the Mexican government. The FBI investigated him. In 1952, while working on a rush order for explosives on a movie set, he accidentally blew himself up. Some people think it was suicide; others believe Howard Hughes actually murdered him. But the fact that he was probably high while making explosives is a strong point.Howard Hughes murdered Jack Parsons.The good money rests on the fact that Jack Parsons was probably high while making explosives.

Richard Din, a meningitis research associate, died in 2012 after getting exposed to the virus he studied. Din was not vaccinated against meningitis. The virus he worked on resisted vaccines. Contact with the virus made Din quickly sick with a rash. Hospital staff rushed him in. He lost consciousness and died from a heart attack. A VA researcher stated that 70 people who contacted DinThese people received antibiotic treatments.These treatments are "100 percent effective" against the infection.

Vera Popova lived an interesting life as one of Russia's first female chemists. She became the first Russian female author of a chemistry book. After studying in Switzerland, she returned home. There, she researched stereochemistry, bee work habits, and published short fiction. In 1896, while trying to make H-C≡P (methylidynephosphane), a chemical like hydrogen cyanide, her lab exploded.The explosion killed her instantly. Vera was trying to create the chemical compound H-C≡P; it would not form until 1961.

This 16th-century chemistry and physics professor lived a charmed life. He befriended Monsieur, the comte de Provence, brother of King Louis XVI. He managed Monsieur's cabinet of natural history. After seeing the Montgolfier brothers' first public balloon demonstration in 1783, Jean-François got inspired. He decided to invent a hybrid hydrogen-and-hot-air balloon to float across the English Channel. Then, mid-flight, François's balloon suddenly deflated.It crashed near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais, falling from an estimated height of 1,500 feet.

Malcolm Casadaban earned degrees from MIT and Harvard University. He quickly became an associate professor of Molecular Genetics, Cell Biology, and Microbiology at the University of Chicago. There, he studied bacteria and different microbes. Sadly, in 2009, he encountered an Malcolm Casadaban studied bacteria and various microbes in Cell Biology and Microbiology at the University of Chicago. In 2009, he was exposed to an unknown.an attenuated strain of Yersinia pestis.This bacterium causes the plague. Because of his undiagnosed iron overload, Casadaban's body succumbed to the illness faster than it would have otherwise.