Posted
December 26, 2013
For
scientists, there is often a rush to publish findings before someone
else does—a rush to announce a discovery, just in case someone else
is working in the same area and about to discover the same thing!
On
this date in 1898, Marie and Curie announced that (a mere five days earlier) they had isolated
from a complex mineral called pitchblende an “active” element
that they named radium.
What I mean by “active” is that pitchblende gives off radiation similar to X-rays. Two years earlier another scientist had discovered that uranium gives off such radiation, and uranium is definitely present in pitchblende. But the radiation from pitchblende is four times stronger than the radiation from uranium itself, Marie found, so she was certain that another, much more active element could also be found in the mineral.
And
she was right! But it took quite a bit of time and labor to prove it
and to isolate the tiny amounts of radium in the mineral. From a ton
of pitchblende, only one-tenth of a gram (around 2/10,000ths of a
pound) of radium could be collected!
 |
| Pitchblende |
Learn
more about radium here.
Learn
more about Marie Curie here. I must mention here that Curie is the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in two different sciences (physics and chemistry)!
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