Marie Curie — Eight Tons of Ore and a Patent Let Go

Marie Curie's life stacked every condition of "impossible": a woman born in Poland, barred from university at home; in Paris, the doors of science shut against her sex; denied a proper laboratory, she and Pierre worked in a leaky shed. In that shed she made the century's discovery — the unknown radioactive elements polonium and radium.

To prove their existence she spent years boiling, stirring, and refining tons of ore residue with her own hands, extracting in the end a mere fraction of a gram.

After becoming the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two sciences, her choice stands taller still: she refused to patent the radium process — "Radium is an element; it belongs to the people." Wealth beyond measure was hers for the taking; she released it, holding science to be humanity's common property.

Before the shut doors, the shed, the tons of ore, and the patent relinquished, the words "my environment is bad" grow difficult to speak.

What do you work for?