Radium. This essay describes, gives a history of, and gives properties of the element radium.

The discovery of the element radium is one of the most famous stories in the science world. It started with the discovery of pitchblende, which is an ore of uranium that is four or five times more radioactive than uranium itself. Pitchblende was discovered by Antione-Henri Baecquerel in 1896. In Paris, France in 1898 Marie and Pierre Curie were studying pitchblende separately, met, got married to each other, and still continued their work on pitchblende. After successfully removing uranium from pitchblende, they noticed that the remaining material was still very radioactive, so they conclu…