Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia in 1934. Her daughter Irène, who also studied radiation, died of leukemia in 1956. Irène's husband Frédéric followed two years later, also of leukemia, in 1958. Three Nobel laureates, all dead of radiation-induced blood cancers.

Marie Curie's notebooks and papers are so radioactive that they may only be opened by people wearing protective suits - and they're stored in lead-lined boxes at the Bibliothèque Nationale.