Radioactivity
Uranium emits something by itself, and the atom turns out not to be permanent.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 6 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Becquerel finds in 1896 that uranium salts fog a photographic plate in the dark. Marie and Pierre Curie isolate polonium and radium, and Marie coins radioactivity, showing it is a property of atoms themselves rather than a chemical reaction — which means atoms change into other atoms. She is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win in two sciences. She died of aplastic anaemia from the exposure.