Becqueral+and+Curie



French scientist, Henri Becquerel, discovered the emission of spontaneous high-energy radiation from pitchblende, a mineral from which uranium is extracted, in 1896. He first noticed that the emitted rays caused gases to ionize, and that the rays were different from X-rays because they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields. Becquerel is given credit today for discovering **radioactivity**.



Marie Curie then decided to do her own investigation on Becquerel's uranium rays. There was little about them for research, so she began experimenting almost immediately with an array of uranium compounds. She found that the intensity of the rays simply depended on the amount of uranium that was present in the compound. With the help of her husband, Pierre, Marie concluded in April of 1898 that pitchblende contained another unknown substance that was much more radioactive than uranium. In July of that same year, Pierre and Marie announced the existence of a new element that they named polonium. Later still in 1898, the couple announced the existence of another new element they had found. They called this element **radium** for its high levels of radioactivity. By 1910, four years after the death of her husband, Marie Curie succeeded in isolating pure radium metal.

In 1903 Henri Becquerel was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics, while the other half was presented to Pierre and Marie Curie.
//Chemistry: The Central Science//. Ninth Edition. Brown, LeMay, and Bursten. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/becquerel-bio.html http://www.aip.org/history/curie/brief/03_radium/radium_1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie Picture of Henri Becquerel: http://www.mlahanas.de/Physics/Bios/images/HenriBecquerel.jpg Picture of Marie Curie: http://educationservices.ca/ESW/Images/Marie_Curie.jpg Picture of Marie and Pierre Curie: http://fun.familyeducation.com/images/PierreMarie_H.jpg
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By Caroline Klidonas