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Comment by swamp40 | Hacker News Reader

Don't think I'd be quoting Madame Curie, if I were her.

Why not? I'm assuming you're implying that Marie Curie's research shortened her life. Marie Curie lived until age 66 in 1934. Life expectancy according to this (http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-stati...) random google search for 1935 in France was 58.09. This means that Marie Curie's life was 113% longer then usual for her time. The current life expectancy in the USA is 78.74 according to the top google result, so if it helps you can think of her as living to about 89 in our terms. In other words despite her research she had a long fruitful life. I wish I had the chance to make as great an impact on the world as she did.

Life expectancy is a tricky statistic to use correctly, because it is significantly dragged lower due to the high rate of death in birth / infancy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy ). Once that hurdle is gotten over, your life expectancy increases dramatically, so it's not sure as to whether or not Curie actually lived a long life compared to contemporary adults.

Considering that we know that Curie's death was caused by longterm exposure to radiation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#Death ), you could reasonably expect her to have lived a much longer life without such exposure.

This pdf has life tables for England (should not be ridiculously different than France, good enough to illustrate the point either way):

http://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/Docs/DEIP_Gallop.pdf

In the 1930s, a 65 year old woman would expect to live an additional 12 or so years.

These are both excellent points about life expectancy, thank for for sharing this information, looks like I got to learn something today. The overall point however that Marie Curie did live a long fruitful life despite her research and could be considered an excellent role model. There is often a misconception that she died young due to her research, and often the subtext of disapproval because of it. I think it's sad that it's common to belittle someone for quoting her.

13% longer, not 113% longer. I know, nitpicky.

Not so nitpicky! I had the same feeling and wondered for a moment, "was life expectancy then just 33 years? Did I misread?"

The question isn't how long someone lives relative to their peers, it is how long they would have lived if they had not been exposed to whatever harmful thing. Considering it was aplastic anemia most likely due to radiation exposure which killed Madam Curie, she would have certainly lived longer than 66 years if she had not been exposed to the ionizing radiation. Not that she could have known any better.

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