(Marie and Pierre Curie)
On April 20th, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie managed to successfully separate radium salts from pitchblende. After spending years studying the mineral pitchblende (more specifically its main element, uranium), Marie and Pierre Curie had finally discovered polonium in 1898. While Pierre continued to look at the core elements of polonium, Marie set her sights on figuring out how to chemically isolate radium from pitchblende. Marie and her assistant, Andre Debierne, treated multiple tons of pitchblende, ultimately resulting in the isolation of one-tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride (Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium, 2010).
For this achievement, they would go on to receive a Nobel Prize in physics a year later alongside French scientist A. Henri Becquerel for their work in radioactivity. In turn, it made Marie Curie the first woman to have ever won a Nobel Prize. Even after her husband’s death in 1906, she continued her studies and managed to isolate pure, metallic radium in 1910. This discovery had earned her yet another Nobel Prize in chemistry, making her the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.
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