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The Curies would work together and combine to receive the Nobel Prize in 1903 for their research with radium. The Curies published in detail all the processes they used to isolate radium, without patenting any of them. Radium was tightly linked with the Curies. Pierre's pioneering work on the effects of radium on living organisms showed it could damage tissue, and this discovery was put to use against cancer and other diseases.
Health and Financial concerns were not the only problems to plague the Curies as Marie wound up her thesis research. Hardship would soon follow Marie once again with her husband dying in an accident. Pierre's life ended tragically on April 19, 1906, when he slipped and fell in the street. His head was crushed under the wheel of a horse-drawn car. Marie took over his classes and continued her own research. It was the first time that a woman would hold an important university research position. She would work harder than ever and receive much prestige. She won the Nobel Prize again in 1911.
In July 1898, Skłodowska–Curie and her husband published a paper together, announcing the existence of an element which they named polonium , in honor of her native Poland, which would for another twenty years remain partitioned among three empires. On December 26, 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named radium for its intense radioactivityh — a word that they coined.
Pitchblende is a complex mineral. The chemical separation of its constituents was an arduous task. The discovery of polonium had been relatively easy; chemically it resembles the element bismuth, and polonium was the only bismuth-like substance in the ore. Radium, however, was more elusive. It is closely related, chemically, to barium, and pitchblende contains both elements. By 1898, the Curies had obtained traces of radium, but appreciable quantities, uncontaminated with barium, still were beyond reach.[23]
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