Discovery of radium

Radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie, working in Paris with their colleague Gustave Bemont. Marie Curie had noticed that pitchblende, the uranium ore, was more radioactive than its uranium content could explain, which suggested that it contained other, more active elements. After processing tonnes of ore residues, the team announced polonium in July and radium in December. The name comes from the Latin radius, meaning ray. In 1910 Marie Curie and Andre-Louis Debierne isolated the pure metal. The Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel, and Marie Curie received the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Radium was used in medicine and in luminous paint, and many workers who painted dials with it suffered serious harm before its dangers were understood.

Open on the timeline