How did Marie Curie discover radium and polonium?
The discovery of radium and polonium was the result of painstaking, systematic work. We began with pitchblende, a uranium ore, which exhibited a far greater radioactivity than could be accounted for by uranium alone. This suggested the presence of other, more intensely radioactive elements. My husband Pierre and I then embarked on the arduous process of chemical separation, dissolving, precipitating, and crystallizing vast quantities of material. It was through this meticulous, iterative method of isolation and measurement that we finally succeeded in identifying and isolating these new elements.
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