1 gram radium marie curie8/25/2023 ![]() From this point of view, if the radioactivity of our substance is not due to barium, it must be attributed to another element.Ģ. Barium and its compounds are not ordinarily radioactive but one of us has shown that radioactivity appears to be an atomic property, persisting in all the chemical and physical states of the material. The following are the reasons which argue in favour of this view:ġ. We believe nevertheless that this substance, although constituted for the greater part by barium, contains in addition a new element which gives it its radioactivity and which moreover is very close to barium in its chemical properties. Finally this substance shows the easily recognized spectrum of barium. The new radioactive substance that we have just found has all the chemical aspects of nearly pure barium: It is precipitated neither by hydrogen sulphide, nor ammonium sulphide, nor by ammonia the sulphate is insoluble in acids and water the carbonate is insoluble in water the chloride, very soluble in water, is insoluble in concentrated hydrochloric acid and in alcohol. In fact, polonium is precipitated out of acid solutions by hydrogen sulphide, its salts are soluble in acids, and water precipitates them from these solutions polonium is completely precipitated by ammonia. The investigations which we are now following are in accord with the first results obtained, but in the course of these researches we have found a second substance strongly radioactive and entirely different in its chemical properties from the first. We have stated the opinion that pitchblende may possibly contain a new element for which we have proposed the name polonium. This substance is closely related to bismuth in its analytical properties. Two of us have shown that by purely chemical processes one can extract from pitchblende a strongly radioactive substance. Boorse and Lloyd Motz, eds., The World of the Atom, vol. BecquerelĬomptes Rendus 127, 1215-7 (1898) translated and reprinted in Henry A. Bémont On a new, strongly radioactive substance, contained in pitchblende In Susan Quinn’s fully dimensional portrait, we come at last to know this complicated, passionate, brilliant woman.Curies Radium Pierre Curie (1859-1906), Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934), and G. From the stubborn sixteen-year-old studying science at night while working as a governess, to her romance and scientific partnership with Pierre Curie – an extraordinary marriage of equals- we fell her defeats as well as her successes: her rejection by the French Academy, her unbearable grief at Pierre’s untimely and gruesome death, and her retreat into a love affair with a married fellow scientist, causing a scandal which almost cost her the second Nobel Prize. From family documents and a private journal only recently made available, Susan Quinn at last tells the full human story. Despite these achievements, or perhaps because of her fame, she has remained a saintly, unapproachable genius. In 1911 she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for isolating new radioactive elements. “One hundred years ago, Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, for which she won the Nobel Prize in physics. Marie Curie, A Life, by Susan Quinn, Da Capo Press, 1995
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