Marguerite Perey born - October 19, 1909

On this day in 1909, French nuclear chemist and discoverer of francium Marguerite Perey was born. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Stay in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I'm Eves
and you're listening to This Day in History Class, a
show that uncovers a little bit more about history every day.
Today is October nineteen nineteen. The day was October nineteenth,

(00:25):
nineteen o nine. French nuclear chemist and physicist Marguerite Parae
was born in Vila Mambla, France, a suburb northeast of Paris.
Parae is known for discovering franci Um seven, element of
the periodic table, and being the first woman elected to
the French Academy of Sciences. Paraye was born into a

(00:46):
middle class Protestant family. As a child, she took an
interest in science and wanted to study medicine, but her
father died in nineteen fourteen, leaving her mom to take
care of her and her fourth sibling. Her mother gave
piano lessons, but the family still faced financial hardship and
Marguerite could not go to a university. She did, however,

(01:10):
attend La Cole Dean Signment Technique Feminine, a school for
female technicians. Her education there qualified her to become a
chemistry technician, and after she completed her studies, she became
a lab assistant at the Radium Institute in Paris, where
physicist and Nobel Prize winner Marie Curry was director. Curry

(01:31):
acted as a mentor to Parae. Radio Activity was the
focus of Parae's work. Her job was to purify actinium,
a radioactive element that was discovered in eighteen by chemist
Andre de Bien. Parae was skilled when it came to
preparing radioactive sources, and she eventually became Curie's personal assistant.

(01:53):
After Curry died in nineteen thirty four, Andre debian became
the director of the institute, and per Ray continued researching
the properties of actinium. She also studied the spectrum of
the radioactive elements barium and strontium. By this time, Paray's
work in radio chemistry was well recognized by others in

(02:14):
her field, but the discovery she's best remembered for it
happened in night. Scientists were trying to find element eighty
seven on the periodic table, one of just a few
elements that they thought were missing from the periodic table.
In her research, Paray realized that the actinium she had
purified was emitting unexpected radiation. After a series of tests,

(02:38):
she came to the conclusion that she had discovered a
new element, one that was predicted by Dimitri Mendeleez periodic table.
It was element eighty seven with an atomic weight of
two three. She initially called the element actin um k,
but it was later renamed francium after her home country.
Jean Perrin announced the ascovery to the French Academy of

(03:01):
Sciences in early January nineteen thirty nine. Paray began working
on the chemical and nuclear properties of franci um and
studying artificial radioactivity. She got a grant to study at
the Sorbonne in Paris, and in nineteen forty six she
got her doctorate of physics. Paray went on to work
at Francis National Center for Scientific Research, and she studied

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the biological effects of francium at the University of Strasbourg,
where she was made head of the Department of Nuclear
Chemistry in nineteen forty nine. By the late nineteen fifties,
a nuclear chemistry lab she directed at Strasbourg had become
a part of a larger nuclear research facility. In nineteen
sixty two, she was elected as the first female corresponding

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member of the French Academy of Sciences. She remained head
of her lab in Strasbourg until her death. In her
last years, she continued to receive awards and the press
recognized her as a notable science tist. Unfortunately, her story
was also a cautionary tale about safety measures that are
necessary when working with radiation. Parae was diagnosed with cancer

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in the nineteen sixties. After years of dealing with that diagnosis,
which was a result of her prolonged exposure to radiation,
she died in France in May of nineteen I'm each
Jeffcote and hopefully you know a little more about history
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(04:34):
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