Word: radiumized
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...Hungarian-born Physicist Leo Szilard stepping off a London curb in 1933 and being struck by the shattering inspiration of sustained chain reaction; Cambridge's Ernest Rutherford angling for the secrets of the universe with string and red sealing wax; Pierre Curie's hands, swollen by prolonged exposure to radium; the flat feet that kept Albert Einstein out of the army; Nobel Prizewinner Enrico Fermi arriving for an appointment at the U.S. Navy Department and overhearing the desk officer tell his admiral, "There's a wop outside"; F.D.R.'s 13-word handwritten approval of atom bomb research beginning with...
...James Watson and Francis Crick, of the double-helix structure of DNA. In 82 years of Nobel history, just six other women have won honors in scientific categories; and only two of these were named alone, without fellow honorees: France's Marie Curie in 1911, for discovering radium and polonium, and Britain's Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1964, for deciphering the structure of penicillin and other compounds. McClintock is the first to win unshared honors in medicine and physiology. Said Watson, who has been director at Cold Spring Harbor and hence McClintock's boss for 15 years...
...year or so of operation, enough plutonium (about 35 Ibs.) could be generated in a small reactor to build two or three bombs of the type dropped on Nagasaki. The plutonium would be formed into a hollow sphere containing a small neutron source that might be made of radium and beryllium. The plutonium itself would be wrapped in a beryllium or uranium reflector, which helps contain neutrons and prolong the chain reaction. This shield would in turn be covered by a layer of TNT charges, the most critical aspect of the design. The charges would have to be so carefully...
...emerging health problem, the Comptroller General has cited half a dozen harmful substances detected in unusual quantities in super-sealed buildings. Among them: carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, both byproducts of smoking, gas stoves and leaky furnaces; the radioactive gas radon, which results from the natural decay of radium, an element found in soil, rocks and other building materials; and numerous particles of dust, soot and asbestos...
Sternglass's warning was exaggerated. But no one-not even radiation experts-can say for sure that he is totally wrong. Despite science's long experience with radiation and bitter knowledge of its risks, like the cancers inflicted on early radium workers, including Madame Curie, disturbingly little is known about how much radiation, or what length of exposure, is safe for humans...