There are some scientists who are harmed and even died because of their research. Here are some of them, as quoted by us from various sources.
1. Karl Scheele is a chemical pharmaceutical expert. He discovered well-known chemical elements such as oxygen, tungsten, to chlorine. Not only that, he also discovered a process similar to pasteurization. Well, strangely enough, Scheele, who is a German-Swedish national, likes to taste his findings. The buildup of chemicals in his body, made him die young at the age of 43. The doctor said he had mercury poisoning.
2. Jean-Francois De Rozier is a French chemist and physicist. He designed a manned flying balloon that could reach a height of 900 meters and successfully piloted it. Once, he wanted to cross the English Channel from France. Unfortunately, he died after the balloon he made was deflated so that it fell into free fall.
3. Sir David Brewster is a Scottish inventor and writer. His hobbies are in the field of optics and light polarization. Unfortunately, while experimenting with chemistry in 1831, he was nearly blind. His vision did return a little, but his eyes continued to suffer from disturbances until he passed away.
4. Elizabeth Ascheim was interested in the discovery of X-rays because she was influenced by her husband. The two ran the first X-ray laboratory located in San Francisco. They experimented for years with X-ray machines, in which their bodies became objects. It made Ascheim suffer from cancer and died.
5. Alexander Bogdanov is a Russian physicist, philosopher, economist and writer. In 1924, he began experimenting with blood transfusions to research the key to youth. After 11 transfusions, he claims his baldness has stopped and his eyesight is better. Unfortunately in 1928 he received a blood transfusion contaminated with malaria and tuberculosis. He died not long after.
6. Robert Bunsen is one of them known for popularizing the bunsen burner laboratory equipment. He started his career in organic chemistry and nearly died twice from arsenic poisoning. Shortly after, he lost his sight due to the cacodyl cyanide explosion. After that he gave up and changed the field of research.
7. Sir Humphrey Davy was an English chemist. When he was younger, he was fired for causing too many explosions. While researching chemistry, he used to inhale a lot of gases and led to the discovery of the anesthetic nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas. But the habit almost killed him several times. Even his eyes were permanently damaged by the nitrogen trichloride explosion.
8. Michael Faraday was a protégé of Sir Humphrey Davy. He improved Davy's findings and also made his own discoveries in the field of electromagnetic fields. Unfortunately, he was also unlucky where his eye was damaged due to an explosion in the laboratory. Not only that, Faraday was also poisoned by chemicals.
2. In 1898, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre discovered radium. He spent his life researching radiation therapy. Continuous exposure to radiation made Marie develop leukemia and died in 1934. Maria Curie was a great figure, where she was the first and last person to receive two Nobel Prizes in different fields, namely physics and chemistry.
1. Galileo Galilei was a legendary Italian scientist who worked in the field of astronomy. But he loved watching the sun with his telescope for hours each day, the retina of his eye was badly damaged. At the end of his life, Galileo Galilei was almost blind.