For example, certain medicines may provide exciting new treatment options, but it’s only later that their side effects come to light. One of the most glaring examples of this was the thalidomide scandal in the late 1950s, when thousands of women took this drug to combat morning sickness during pregnancy, and it was later found to cause birth defects. With her husband Pierre Curie, Marie's efforts led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre's death, the further development of X-rays. One of the central paradoxes of scientific research and technological development is that while every new discovery brings previously unknown possibilities to light, these discoveries can also have negative effects that may not be readily apparent. Both the elements have tendency to glow in dark. One of the first uses of radium was as an anti-cancer treatment, owing to its observed ability to damage tissue. That for the first time in history it could be shown that an element could be transmuted into another element, revolutionized chemistry and signified a new epoch. On February 17th, 1898, she tested a sample of heavy black pitchblende (a naturally-occurring mineral containing uranium) which she found was emitting unexpectedly strong radiation. It was marketed as a miraculous panacea, and accordingly was added lots of things, something that in retrospect was an alarming practice. The year before, Marie Curie had died, aged sixty-six, of leukemia caused by radiation.© Copyright 2020 History Today Ltd. Company no. Step 2. Scientists now know that radium damages bone marrow particularly, because the body treats it as calcium, depositing it in the bones and providing it easy access to the marrow.Although the benefits of radium fall far short of what it was once believed it could do, with careful handling radium still proves useful in medical treatment and scientific research. They are all produced by the decay of the elements uranium and thorium. However, the use of radium-based paints for such applications was eventually found to be extremely dangerous, after many workers exposed to the paint died from the effects of radiation.The growing awareness of radium’s toxicity made it seem less and less suited to general use, and when Marie Curie died in 1934, it was speculated that her exposure to radiation played a part in her death. After a summer holiday break in the Auvergne, bicycling and playing with their baby daughter Irène, the Curies returned to their experiment. On December 20th, 1898, Pierre Curie scrawled the word 'radium' in his notebook as the name for a new element he and his wife Marie had discovered in their laboratory in Paris.A few days before the Christmas of 1898, Pierre Curie scrawled the word 'radium' in his notebook as the name for a new element he and his wife Marie had brought laboriously to light in their ramshackle laboratory in Paris. Interesting Facts about Radium. The most abundant is radium-226 which has a half-life of 1600 years. The striking properties possessed by radium gave to its discovery a worldwide interest, all the more intense because of the hope which was inspired by the possible healing qualities of the radiations from this new element. Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1867 to a family of seven. That hope is being realized in large measure. Early Life and Education. Marie worked on, and the Curie family accumulated Nobel prizes in the most astonishing quantities. Soldiering on alone, Marie was able by 1910 to isolate pure radium from pitchblende. Marie won the Nobel prize for chemistry by herself in 1911 (she is still the only person to have been awarded the prizes for both physics and chemistry). By July they had discovered an element they christened 'polonium' in compliment to Marie's Polish homeland (Marie also coined the ominous term 'radioactivity').Polonium, however, did not account for all the pitchblende's radiation. The discovery came from … The day after Christmas 1898, a second paper came out, announcing the discovery of another new element: radium. Marie and Pierre Curie, Polish and French chemists, discovered radium in 1898, according to New World Encyclopedia. She coined the word “radioactivity” to describe this property of these two elements, and along with other scientists of the time, opened the way to a new understanding that the atom was not the smallest unit of matter, but that even smaller particles (notably electrons) existed within it.Building on this information, and on her observation that two uranium-containing compounds, pitchblende and chalcolite, produced much more radiation than uranium alone, Marie Curie speculated that there were other, as yet unknown, elements in these compounds. Looking into this phenomenon further, Marie Curie found that not only uranium, but also the element thorium, caused these effects regardless of their physical state (for example, dry or wet, crushed or solid), and from this deduced that the rays were part of the elements’ atomic makeup. Need help sorting, organizing, storing, and managing them? At the beginning of the 20 th century, radium was a popular additive in consumer products such as toothpaste, hair creams, and even food items because of … Marie Curie's 1898 publication with her husband and their collaborator Gustave Bémont of their discovery of radium and polonium was honoured by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society presented to the ESPCI Paris in 2015.

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