Radium Institute

In 1921, Irene Curie (1897-1956) began research at the Radium Institute. Five years later she married Frederic Joliot (1900-1958). a brilliant young physicist who was also an assistant at the Institute. In 1931, they began a research program in nuclear chemistry that led to several important discoveries and at least one near miss. The Joliot-Curies were the first to demonstrate induced radioactivity. They also discovered the positron, a particle that scientists had been seeking for many years. They narrowly missed finding another, more fundamental particle, the neutron. That honor went to James Chadwick in England. In 1935,... 

Laboratory at the University of Munich. At the Radium Institute in Vienna he made the first accurate determination of the atomic weight of radium. His work on radioactive elements strikingly confirmed the hypothesis of atomic disintegration proposed by Rutherford and Soddy. 

Marie s daughter, Irene, joined in Ihe work at the Radium institute. With her husband, Frederic Joliot. and under the combined name Jttlim-Curie. continued the weak of the Curies in 1935. the puir won a Nobel Prize lor their discovery of artificial radioactiv ity. 

Paterson Laboratories, Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute, Manchester 20, England... 

The UNEX Process A Universal Solvent Intensive collaboration between the INL and the Khlopin Radium Institute of Saint Petersburg (KRI, Russia) since 1994 has resulted in the development of the UNEX process for the treatment of radioactive waste stored at the INL (116-125). The UNEX process is based on the following tertiary solvent ... 

Visiting Scientist, Khlopin Radium Institute, Leningrad, September 1990. 

For many years, in the chief laboratory of the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, this woman, until she was sixty-six, worked silently with her test tubes and flasks while all the world waited for another miracle. Even to the end the years, had not completely broken this immortal bottle-washer. She remained broad-shouldered and above average height. Her splendidly arched brow was crowned with a mass of wavy gray hair, once blond. Her soft, expressive, light blue eyes were full of sadness. 

UNEX [UNiversal EXtractant] A process for removing all the major radioactive elements from nuclear processing liquors in one step, using a mixture of complex extractants. Developed from 1994 by an international team from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (United States) and the Khlopin Radium Institute (Russia). 

Marie Curie worked tirelessly to develop radioactivity as a new discipline in physics. With the help of five assistants, she studied the effects of radioactivity and developed the atomic theory of its origin. In 1911, Marie was awarded her second Nobel Prize— this time in chemistry, for the chemical processes discovered in the identification of radium and polonium and for the subsequent characterization of these elements. During World War I, she trained doctors in the new methods of radiology and, after learning to drive, personally transported medical equipment to hospitals. After the war, Madame Curie assumed leadership of the newly built Radium Institute in Paris. In 1920, a campaign was mounted in the United States to produce 1 gram of radium for Marie to support her research. She traveled to the United States to receive the precious vial of radium at the White House in 1921. 

Percy s Legacy Marguerite Percy made important discoveries during an era when few women held prominent roles in the sciences. She was interested in science even as a small child. However, her father died early on, and there was no money for Percy to attend a university. Instead, she found a job at the Radium Institute in Paris. The Radium Institute had been founded by Marie Curie (1867-1934) and her husband, Pierre Curie (1859-1906), to study radioactive materials. 

Percy was originally hired for a three-month period. But Madame Curie was very impressed with Percy s skills in the laboratory. Percy eventually ended up working at the Radium Institute until 1935. 

She met her future husband Pierre Curie, a professor in the school of physics, in 1894, and they were married the following year. She succeeded her husband as head of the physics laboratory at the Sorbonne, where she gained her doctor of science degree in 1903. Following the death of her husband in 1906, she took his place as professor of general physics in the faculty of sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was appointed director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914. 

In 1921-22 Vernadsky organised the Radium Institute based on his radiological laboratory in the Academy. 

Marie Curie s Radium Institute at the east end of the Rue Pierre Curie in the Latin Quarter, built just before the war with funds from the French government and the Pasteur Foundation, had the advantage in any studies that required polonium. Radon gas decays over time to three only mildly radioactive isotopes lead 210, bismuth 210 and polonium 210, which thus become available for chemical separation. Medical doctors throughout the world then used radon sealed into glass ampules— seeds —for cancer treatment. When the radon decayed, which it did in a matter of days, the seeds no longer served. Many physicians sent them on to Paris as a tribute to the woman who discovered radium. They accumulated to the world s largest source of polonium. 

Husband and wife were then thirty-three and thirty-six years old, with a small daughter at home. They sailed and swam together in summer, skied together in winter, worked together efficiently in the laboratory in the Latin Quarter on the Rue Pierre Curie. Irdne had succeeded her mother as director of the Radium Institute in 1932 the long-widowed pioneer was mortally ill with leukemia induced by too many years of exposure to radiation. 

Frdddric Joliot and two colleagues, a cultivated Austrian named Hans von Halban and a huge, keen Russian named Lew Kowarski, began an experiment similar to Fermi s the last week in February to identify secondary neutrons from fi ssion. They also used a tank of water with a central neutron source but dissolved their uranium in the water rather than packing it around the source. More important to their priority of research, they had immediate access to the Radium Institute s ample radium supply. 

By mid-April Szilard had managed to borrow about five hundred pounds of black, grimy uranium oxide free of charge from the Eldorado Radium Corporation, an organization owned by the Russian-born Pregel brothers, Boris and Alexander. Boris had studied at the Radium Institute in Paris Eldorado speculated in rare minerals and owned important uranium deposits at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada. 

Fr d ric and Ir ne Joliot-Curie at the Radium Institute in Paris discovered artificial radioactivity but missed the neutron. C. 1935. 

CHAPTER 2 CO02 Charles D. Winters/Photo Researchers, Inc. 2.1 Corbis/Bettmann 2.2 Wilson Ho/University of California Irvine 2.3a-b Richard Megna/Fundamental Photographs 2.6 Radium Institute/Emilio Segre Archives 2.7 Reserve Bank of New Zealand 2.16a-b Richard Megna/Fundamental Photographs 2.17 University of California Berke-ley/Emilio Segre Archives 2.21 iStockphoto 2.23 Eric Schrader - Pearson Science... 

The authors appreciate the outstanding assistance of the organizing committee, whose other members were K. L. Peddicord, Texas A M University Leonard N. Lazarev, V. G. Khlopin Radium Institute and Fred Witmer and Paul Krumpe, U.S. Department of Energy. The endless encouragement and enthusiasm of Lee Peddicord are specifically acknowledged, as are the efforts of Leonard Lazarev, which included coordinating all aspects of the Russian technical participation in the ARW. 

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