Several Nobel Prizes were awarded for discoveries in radioactivity, perhaps the most well-known was the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded in 1903 to Antoine Henri Becquerel "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity", the other half jointly to Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, née Sklodowska "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.” Marie Curie went on to receive a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, in 1911 for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium, which would have also been shared with her husband had he not been killed in an accident crossing the street in 1906. Well after Marie Curie received both Nobel Prizes and had come to be known as Our Lady of Radium, Marguerite Perey, then age 19, interviewed and was hired to be Marie Curie’s personal technician and was given the task of isolating actinium from uranium ore. After Curie’s death in 1934, Perey stayed on in the lab working under Andre Debierne and Irene Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie’s daughter, who also received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 with her husband Frederic Joliot, “in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements.” In 1939, Perey noticed the actinium she purified emitted unexpected radiation and proved that this radiation was new, that she had discovered a new element, which she named francium, after her country. Like her mentor, Perey had high hopes for her discovery, that it would be used for the early diagnosis of cancer. Tragically, just like the short-lived element she discovered that only exists in the amount of an ounce at any one time on the earth, the years she would have spent researching francium were cut short as she succumbed to a gruesome bone cancer at age 65. Marguerite Perey was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1962, an honor denied Marie Curie and her daughter, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1952, 1958, and 1961, but never received the Prize. The 1961 nomination reads, “…Mrs. Marguerite Perey (who is nominated) for her discovery of element 87, name francium, is in fact seriously ill, a victim (of exposure) to radioactivity. To recognize her contribution would be a universal act of humanity and a Christian act of charity.”

Vive le francium: Marguerite Perey, discoverer of the last natural element

254th National Meeting (2017)

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