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Marie Curie and her husband Pierre became famous for a discovery that shook the foundations of science and earned them a Nobel Prize: there was hidden energy locked inside certain minerals. But that was just the beginning: did you know they went further, and Madame Curie won a second Nobel?

Let’s start with the first Nobel Prize: at the end of the 19th century, physicist Henri Becquerel found, to his amazement, that uranium salts could emit rays that left marks on a photographic plate. This intrigued the newlywed scientist Marie Curie, who used an instrument designed by her husband, the piezo-electrometer, to measure these invisible rays. This is how the Curies discovered radioactivity, an inner energy of uranium atoms. ⚛️

But with this discovery came a mystery that would keep them busy for years. Marie Curie noticed that certain uranium minerals, like pitchblende, emitted even more rays than pure uranium. “It is a surprising fact,” she wrote in a scientific paper, “and suggests that these minerals contain an element more active than uranium itself.” Determined to find this mysterious new source of radioactivity, the couple had to separate pitchblende into its chemical components, in a laborious process that required grinding, dissolving, and filtering the mineral. 🧪

Using Pierre’s electrometer, the Curies discovered that two of the isolated fractions were highly radioactive, despite not containing uranium. One was rich in bismuth and the other in barium… but neither of these elements emits rays! So they concluded that the fractions must include small amounts of two unknown elements, both super radioactive but very similar to bismuth and barium. The physicist couple was convinced they had found proof of two new elements, which they named polonium and radium. 🌟

However, chemists wouldn’t be convinced until these elements were properly isolated. The Curies got to work: they occupied a shed in Paris and had tons of pitchblende rocks sent from a mine. They spent three years processing the radioactive mineral. Marie separated the chemical compounds, and Pierre analyzed the samples at each step, all the while unaware of the risk to their health. Finally, they isolated a small amount of pure radium chloride, hundreds of times more radioactive than uranium. Unfortunately, Pierre died in an accident shortly after, but their efforts went down in history, and Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize. 🏆

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