Radium History

The radioactive element is a silvery, shiny, soft metal that is chemically similar to calcium and barium. It is found in tiny amounts in uranium ores. Its radioactivity is a million times stronger that that of uranium. Famous history of discovery (in a shed). Initially used in cancer therapy. Fatal side effects. Small amounts are used in luminous dyes. Radium was of utmost importance for research into the atom. Today its reputation is rather shaky as its decay gives rise to the unpleasant radon (see earlier). In nuclear reactors, tiny amounts of actinium are formed from radium. 

In Soddy s 1908 Interpretation of Radium lectures, he laid out the current state of knowledge about radiation and radium, discussing with scientific specificity (but in relatively accessible terms) the history of the last decade of discoveries in radioactivity and current interpretations of them. But the lectures and book concluded with more imaginative, less strictly scientific speculations about the uses of such knowledge and the powers of the energy released by atomic transmutation. Returning to the subject of alchemy, Soddy noted ... 

Here, then, for the first time in the history of Chemistry, we have the undoubted formation of one chemical element from another, for, leaving out of the question the nature of the emanation, there can be no doubt that radium is a chemical element. This is a point which must be insisted upon, for it has been suggested that radium may be a compound of helium with some unknown element or, perhaps, a compound ofhdium with lead, since it has been shown that lead is probably one of the end products of the decomposition of radium. The following considerations, however, show this view to be altogether untenable (i.) All attempts to prepare compounds of helium with other... 

Smithells, initially, expressed his excitement about the state of chemistry. Though the discovery of radioactivity did mark a new epoch in the history of chemistry, and radium was in a way an embarrassment, since it was elementary and it also broke into elementary substances, there was not enough evidence to warrant any unsettlement of the scientific articles of the chemists faith. ... 

X. Roque, Marie Curie and the Radium Industry A Preliminary Sketch, in X. Roque and Soraya Boudia (eds.), Science, Medicine and Industry The Curie and Joliot-Cu-rie Laboratories, special issue of History and Technology 13, number 4 (1997) 267-291. 

How does the early history of radium and its uses illustrate the need for people to understand the connections among science, technology, society, and the environment ... 

Harvie, D.I., Deadly Sunshine The History and Fatal Legacy of Radium, Tempus Publishing, Stroud, UK, 2005, 66. 

Because of its history, radium is a very interesting and important element. But radium and its compounds have relatively few uses. In fact, no more than about 5 pounds (2 kilograms) of radium is made each year. The small amount of radium that is available is used for medical purposes. The radium is used to produce radon gas, which, in turn, is used to treat cancer. Radiation given off by radium is sometimes used to study the composition of metals, plastics, and other materials. 

Chapter 9 covers radium, which exists only in radioactive forms. Radium has a fascinating history, from its discovery by Marie Curie to its applications in nuclear medicine. 

The use of radium for glow-in-the-dark paint cannot be relegated to history. While radium-laced paint was banned in the United States and Europe in the 1950s, the product and practice has not been prohibited in all countries. 

Harvie, David I. Deadly Sunshine The History and Fatal Legacy of Radium. Gloucestershire, U.K. The History Press, 2005. This book provides a detailed summary of radiums place in human history, from its discovery by Marie Curie to its uses and place in the worlds economy and its lingering environmental dangers. 

The discovery and the history of radioactivity is closely connected to that of modern science. In 1896 Antoine Henri Becquerel observed and described the spontaneous emission of radiation by uranium and its compounds. Two years later, in 1898, the chemical research of Marie and Pierre Curie led to the discovery of polonium and radium. 

FIGURE 2.6 Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934). When Marie Curie presented her doctoral thesis, it was described as the greatest single contribution of any doctoral thesis in the history of science. In 1903 Henri Becquerel, Maire Curie, and her husband, Pierre, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work on radioactivity (a term she introduced). In 1911 Marie Curie won a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium. 

We have already discussed the history of discovery of two natural radioactive elements, that is, uranium and thorium, in Chapter 4. These elements can fairly easily be found in minerals with chemical analysis since their content is sufficiently high. Other natural radioactive elements (polonium, radon, radium, actinium, and protactinium) are among the least abundant elements on Earth. Moreover, they exist in nature only because they are the products of radioactive transformations of uranium and thorium. 

Below readers will see for themselves how accurate were Mendeleev s predictions of the properties of a heavy analogue of tellurium. But these predictions had only an indirect effect on the history of polonium, if any. The discovery of polonium (and then radium) proved to be a significant milestone in the science of radioactivity and gave an impetus to its development. 

But in the interval between the syntheses of the isotopes At and At a remarkable event occurred. The scientists from the Vienna Radium Institute B. Karlik and T. Bernert managed to find natural astatine. This was an extremely skillful study straining to the utmost the capacity of radiometry. The work was crowned with success and element 85 was born for the second time. As in the cases of technetium and promethium, we can name two dates in the history of astatine, namely, the year of its synthesis (1940) and the year of its discovery in nature (1943). 

Another major turning point in the history of nuclear science came with the discovery of fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in December 1938 (Hahn and Strassmann 1939a, b). In several laboratories in Rome, Berlin, and Paris, a complex series of P-decay chains resulting from neutron irradiation of uranium had been investigated since 1934, and these chains had been assigned to putative transuranium elements formed by neutron capture in uranium with subsequent P" transitions increasing the atomic numbers (see Sect. 1.2.3). But then evidence appeared that known elements in the vicinity of uranium, such as radium, were produced as well. When Hahn and Strassmaim attempted to prove this by a classical fractional crystallization separation of radium from barium serving as its carrier, the radioactivity turned out to be barium, not radium hence, new and totally unexpected type of nuclear reaction had to be invoked. 

Many individual components in the series are referred to by names derived from their positions in the series and other details that are no longer of much interest except to reveal the history of discovery of structure of each series. The most common names of this type for the Th series are given in O Fig. 13.1. Since Ra and Ac are sandwiched between two isotopes of thorium, they were called mesothorium 1 and 2 meso intermediate or in the middle), with symbols MsThi and MsTh2- Th has higher specific activity (activity per unit mass) than Th and was called radiothorium (RdTh). Tn ( Rn) is short for thoron, the gaseous component similar to radon from radium. Relatively simple chemical procedures could show that there were three species following Tn, and these were named... 

The radiochemlstry of lead has a history almost as long as the history of radiochemlstry Itself. In 1099j three years after the discovery of radioactivity by Becquerel and only a year after the discovery of radium and polonium by the Curies,... 

Radium was no ordinary product. A naturally occurring radioactive substance found in uranium ores, it was scarce and extremely valuable. Though isolated only at the turn of the century, by 1946 radium had a rich, sometimes bizarre history that was intertwined with the discovery of radioactivity and the great advances made in atomic science over the previous half-century. 

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