How element Francium is related to Marie Curie?

[Jaga]

How element Francium is related to Marie Curie?

[Bob S]

;D Jaga.
A wild guess. Francium was discovered in France and France was also the adopted home of Marie Curie. Francium is not available in enough quantity on Earth and must be manufactured. The half-life of Francium is very short (about 22 minutes). The element is radioactive and classified as a metal.
Just a guess of course and you probably know more about it than I.

[justjohn]

Aug 12, 2008 23:32:10 GMT -7 Jaga said:

How element Francium is related to Marie Curie?

In 1900 André Louis Debierne (1874–1949) , the collaborator of Pierre Curie (1859–1906) and Marie Curie, announced the discovery of a thorium-like element, which he named actinium.The name from the Greek aktis, aktinos, “ray,” was illogical because actinium scarcely emits any observable radiation. Actinium was the third radioelement found in uranium ores after polonium and radium. Four years later, the German radiochemist Friedrich Oskar Giesel (1852–1927) claimed the discovery of a new element, emanium, a strongly radioactive substance, closely similar to the rare earth lanthanum (atomic number 57). In this respect he was correct, and a long controversy followed concerning the priority of the discovery. This question is still equivocal although Debierne is now officially recognized as the discoverer, and consequently the name actinium was retained. Neither of the two authors indicated the half-life of their product.


In 1935 the three natural radioactive series (238U, 235U, and 232Th) were coherent and complete, but the elements with atomic numbers 85 and 87 were still missing in the periodic table. It was anticipated that an isotope of element 87 could be formed by a-decay of actinium. In 1939 a young technician, Marguerite Perey (1909–1975), the 30th anniversary of whose death we celebrate this year, was recruited at the Institut du Radium in Paris as the personal laboratory assistant of Marie Curie (1867–1934). For many years Perey worked on actinium and in 1939 discovered the first isotope of element 87, Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev’s eka-cesium, the heaviest alkali metal, for which she proposed the name “francium.” The events leading up to Perey’s discovery, her work, and its consequences are recounted.

[Jaga]

Bob,

thanks for a good try. John is right. Francium was discovered in Maria Curie laboratory by her assistant!
She wanted to call the new element something like "catty" from "cation" but her friends stated that this name would remind "cat" too much

[Bob S]

;D A tip of the hat to John and his answer. Guess I'll have to try harder next time. ;D ;D