Radium (Ra) was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie today in 1898 (after they had discovered polonium and ahead of Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize in 1903). It’s a naturally occurring radioactive metal — a radionuclide formed by the decay of uranium and thorium in the environment, occurring at trace levels in almost all rocks, soil, water, plants, and animals. Chronic exposure to elevated levels of radium can result in increased bone, liver, or breast cancer and, as radium decays, it creates a radioactive gas, radon, which may be measured and detected (and in and of itself is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States). Curie succeeded her husband as head of the Sorbonne’s physics lab and took his place as Professor of General Physics—the first woman to hold this title at the Sorbonne — upon his death. She died in 1934 at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium, in Passy, France — near the far eastern border with Italy and Switzerland — from complications related to a lifetime of exposure to radium. She was ultimately interred with her husband at the Panthéon, in Paris (pictured), just down the hall from Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among other luminaries.
NCPA
