Radium

Radium is a soft, silvery element, the last of the alkaline earth metals. Found naturally in pitchblende and other uranium ores, radium is over a million times more radioactive than the same mass of uranium.

Marie Curie believed that the radioactivity of uranium ores indicated the presence of undiscovered elements. Her husband Pierre joined her in the search.

Together in 1998, they isolated a fraction from pitchblende that glowed in the dark - and contained radium. Seven tons of pitchblende are required to yield just one gram of radium. In 1911 Marie and a co-worker obtained a sample of the metal by the electrolysis of radium chloride.

Radium (above) and pitchblende (below.)

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