Frederick Soddy FRS was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes". Soddy was a polymath who mastered chemistry, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, finance and economics.
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.
Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) upon exposure to air, forming a black surface layer of radium nitride (Ra3N2). All isotopes of radium are radioactive, the most stable isotope being radium-226 with a half-life of 1,600 years. When radium decays, it emits ionizing radiation as a by-product, which can excite fluorescent chemicals and cause radioluminescence.
Greensville County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 11,391. Its county seat is Emporia.
Ottawa is a city in and the county seat of LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. It is located at the confluence of the navigable Fox River and Illinois River, the latter being a conduit for river barges and connects Lake Michigan at Chicago, to the Mississippi River, and North America's 25,000 mile river system. The population estimate was 18,742, as of 2020. It is the principal city of the Ottawa, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Lansdowne is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States, located 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Center City Philadelphia. It was named for the Marquess of Lansdowne. As of the 2010 census, the borough had a population of 10,620.
The curie is a non-SI unit of radioactivity originally defined in 1910. According to a notice in Nature at the time, it was to be named in honour of Pierre Curie, but was considered at least by some to be in honour of Marie Skłodowska–Curie as well, and is in later literature considered to be named for both.
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.
Radium, elevation 6,890 feet (2,100 m), is a small rural unincorporated community in southwestern Grand County, Colorado, United States. The community sits in the mountains along an isolated stretch of Colorado River downstream from Gore Canyon and southwest of Kremmling. The mainline of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad runs past the community, which is accessible by dirt and gravel roads only. The community of Radium consists of a cluster of houses on the north side of a bridge on the Colorado. The primary local industry is livestock ranching. The community is named for the element radium, which was formerly mined in Colorado in the early 20th century.
The Eldorado Mine is a defunct mine located in Port Radium, Northwest Territories, Canada. The site, which covers 12 hectares, is located next to Echo Bay in the shore of Great Bear Lake.
Nuclear material refers to the metals uranium, plutonium, and thorium, in any form, according to the IAEA. This is differentiated further into "source material", consisting of natural and depleted uranium, and "special fissionable material", consisting of enriched uranium (U-235), uranium-233, and plutonium-239. Uranium ore concentrates are considered to be a "source material", although these are not subject to safeguards under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Radium Springs is an unincorporated community located on the southeast outskirts of Albany in Dougherty County, Georgia, United States. It is part of the Albany Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Radium dials are watch, clock and other instrument dials painted with luminous paint containing radium-226 to produce radioluminescence. Radium dials were produced throughout most of the 20th century before being replaced by safer tritium-based luminous material in the 1970s and finally by non-toxic, non-radioactive strontium aluminate–based photoluminescent material from the middle 1990s.
The United States Radium Corporation was a company, most notorious for its operations between the years 1917 to 1926 in Orange, New Jersey, in the United States that led to stronger worker protection laws. After initial success in developing a glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint, the company was subject to several lawsuits in the late 1920s in the wake of severe illnesses and deaths of workers who had ingested radioactive material. The workers had been told that the paint was harmless. During World War I and World War II, the company produced luminous watches and gauges for the United States Army for use by soldiers.
Radium jaw, or radium necrosis, is a historic occupational disease brought on by the ingestion and subsequent absorption of radium into the bones of radium dial painters. It also affected those consuming radium-laden patent medicines. A patent medicine is an over the counter (non-prescription) medicine or medicinal preparation that is typically protected and advertised by a trademark and trade name and claimed to be effective against some disorders and varying symptoms.
Radium is a chemical element with symbol Ra and atomic number 88.
Radon-222 is the most stable isotope of radon, with a half-life of approximately 3.8 days. It is transient in the decay chain of primordial uranium-238 and is the immediate decay product of radium-226. Radon-222 was first observed in 1899, and was identified as an isotope of a new element several years later. In 1957, the name radon, formerly the name of only radon-222, became the name of the element. Owing to its gaseous nature and high radioactivity, radon-222 is one of the leading causes of lung cancer.
Radium is an unincorporated community in section 19 of Comstock Township, Marshall County, Minnesota, United States. It was built alongside the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad branch line built in 1905 from Thief River Falls, Minnesota, to Kenmare, North Dakota. The place was named for the element radium. Radium had its own post office from 1905 to 1984. Since 1984, Radium has been served by the post office in Warren. It is also on the Warren telephone exchange and part of the Warren-Alvarado-Oslo school district. The townsite is being slowly reclaimed for use as farmland. There is still a large grain elevator on the railroad line south of the townsite. A small Lutheran church 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) south of the town antedates the coming of the railroad; Immanuel Lutheran Church (LCMS) was organized in 1897.
The world's largest producer of uranium is Kazakhstan, which in 2019 produced 43% of the world's mining output. Canada was the next largest producer with a 13% share, followed by Australia with 12%. Uranium has been mined in every continent except Antarctica.
Radium is an unincorporated community in Jones County, Texas, United States.
