
Hat, swimwear, toothbrush, two radio needles (the chemical element). This was more or less how Marie Curie’s suitcase was organized when she left Paris in June 1926. The destination: Rio de Janeiro. The invitation came from the Embassy of Brazil in France, but it was the French government that paid for the trip.
At the age of 59 and awarded two Nobel Prizes (Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911), Curie did not seem very excited about the trip. In almost all photos in Brazil she appears sitting and with no interest in looking at the camera. The French naturalized Polish had only one clear objective: to publicize her research on radioactivity.




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