The Curies and Radium (Immortals of Science)

Pierre and Marie Curie are perhaps the most remarkable husband-and-wife team in the history of science. Together they set out to isolate the mysterious radioactive substance in the masses of pitchblende ore available to them in the old shed that was their laboratory.

It was back-breaking work, but Marie and Pierre kept at it. Finally they obtained a product whose radiation was four hundred times greater than that of uranium! Marie called the new element Polonium, after her beloved native Poland. Later, they isolated their famous element radium-nine hundred times as active as uranium!

Pierre's brilliant career was cut short by his tragic death in 1906, but Marie went on with their courageous work alone. In 1911, she received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of radium.

True, it was Marie's long exposure to radium and X-rays that caused her death. But out of her death came life, for radium is one of modern medicine's greatest life-savers.