{"id":274,"date":"2015-09-24T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/randomstein.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2020-12-31T16:55:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T15:55:52","slug":"musee-curie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomstein.takemeinsandwich.com\/fr\/musee-curie\/","title":{"rendered":"Mus\u00e9e Curie: Radium, glorious Radium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I love this kind of museum, where you can spontaneously\u00a0come in\u00a0without standing in a 30 minute ticket line, see something interesting, learn something new and continue your way wherever you were going to. That\u00a0perfectly describes our museum of the day –\u00a0Mus\u00e9e Curie<\/strong>, founded in 1935 on the ground floor of the Curie Pavilion of the Institut du Radium. The museum is rather small but full of intriguing objects and documents connected with radioactivity and its uses, and of course the famous Curie family as well.<\/p>\n

One of the most memorizing\u00a0parts of the exhibition is connected with the \u00ab\u00a0Radium obsession\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/span><\/span> which happened right after its discovery\u00a0in the beginning of the XX century. Radium was taken as a miraculous element, and radium-containing foods (bread, chocolate, drinking water), cosmetics (face creams, toothpaste, powder), vitamins and supplements appeared on the market. For example, the famous\u00a0cosmetic brand Tho-Radia said its cream \u00ab\u00a0made on the base of\u00a0thorium and radium\u00a0\u00bb<\/em> is prepared \u00ab\u00a0by the formula\u00a0of Dr Alfred Curie\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>, which, by the way, had no family relationship with Marie and Pierre Curie. Merciless marketing. But don’t you worry, as Radium is rare and expensive (Marie Curie was working for 12 years to get a tiny grain), the amount of it in all those \u00ab\u00a0miracle-working\u00a0\u00bb products was so microscopic, that it made no harm. However, this chemical element was classified as poison in 1937. The obsession was gone.<\/p>\n

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Another place of interest is the laboratory<\/em><\/span><\/span> of Marie Curie where she was making\u00a0research from 1914\u00a0to\u00a01934. Later in this laboratory her daughter and son-in-law Ir\u00e8ne and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity, for which they received the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. I always find it beyond exciting to visit places where the\u00a0extraordinary people were working or living!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mus\u00e9e Curie is a fine mix of interactive\u00a0and vintage exhibits, that would interest not only those who are fond of chemistry or work in this field. I always sucked at chemistry in school, but at this museum I\u00a0felt closer to\u00a0solving the mystery of it.<\/p>\n

Admission is free.
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Official website:<\/em> musee.curie.fr<\/a>
\nAddress:<\/em> 1 Rue Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005 Paris.
\nOpening hours:<\/em>\u00a0Wed-Sat:<\/strong>\u00a01 pm-5 pm. Closed in August and public holidays.<\/p>\n

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