Polonium, radium and the science of radioactivity: from a leaking shed in Paris to radium institutes in two countries.
Marie Curie's measurements showed that the strength of uranium's rays depends only on how much uranium is present, whatever its chemical form, temperature or lighting. The rays had to come from the atoms themselves. She coined the word radioactivity for this new property of matter.
The first element ever found by tracking radioactivity. Marie and Pierre Curie followed the rising activity of pitchblende fractions into the bismuth portion and announced a new metal on 18 July 1898. She named it after Poland, a country then absent from the map.
A second hidden element, travelling with barium, announced on 26 December 1898 with the chemist Gustave Bémont. It glowed in the dark and seemed to give off energy from nowhere. Radium changed physics, chemistry and medicine.
by Mei Lin 