Pierre and Marie Curie - French and Polish Chemists
(1859-1906) (1867-1934)
Fall 1897
While studying in Paris, Marie begins a systemmatic study of all the known elements with the intent of discovering which of them emit Becquerel's rays. She finds that along with Uranium, Thorium also produces the rays. She proposes the name radioactivity for this phenomenon.She also studies natural ores and finds some of them to be more radioactive than Uranium or Thorium. Marie draws the conclusion that the ores contained an as yet undiscovered element which is more radioactive than Uranium or Thorium, She presents her studies on April 12, 1898. By July 1898, Marie and her husband Pierre have discovered one of these new elements which they name Polonium. In December of the same year they announce the discovery of Radium. Over the next four years they process several tons of pitchblende ore by hand and eventually isolate one decigram of radium chloride. From this, Marie is able to determine radium's atomic weight. All of this work is reported in Marie's doctoral thesis on June 25, 1903.

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The Curie's lab in Paris - Courtesy of La Nature

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