Radium

Radium (Ra), radioactive chemical element, the heaviest of the alkaline-earth metals of Group 2 (IIa) of
the periodic table. Radium is a silvery white metal that does not occur free in nature.

Occurrence, properties, and uses

Radium was discovered (1898) by Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and an assistant, G. Bémont, after Marie
Curie observed that the radioactivity of pitchblende was four or five times greater than that of the
uranium it contained and was not fully explained on the basis of radioactive polonium, which she had
just discovered in pitchblende residues. The new, powerfully radioactive substance could be
concentrated with barium, but, because its chloride was slightly more insoluble, it could be precipitated
by fractional crystallization. The separation was followed by the increase in intensity of new lines in the
ultraviolet spectrum and by a steady increase in the apparent atomic weight of the material until a value
of 225.2 was obtained, remarkably close to the currently accepted value of 226.03. By 1902, 0.1 gram of
pure radium chloride was prepared by refining several tons of pitchblende residues, and by 1910 Marie
Curie and André-Louis Debierne had isolated the metal itself.

Thirty-four isotopes of radium, all radioactive, are known; their half-lives, except for radium-226 (1,600
years) and radium-228 (5.75 years), are less than a few weeks. The long-lived radium-226 is found in
nature as a result of its continuous formation from uranium-238 decay. Radium thus occurs in all
uranium ores, but it is more widely distributed because it forms water-soluble compounds; Earth’s
surface contains an estimated 1.8 × 1013 grams (2 × 107 tons) of radium.

Since all the isotopes of radium are radioactive and short-lived on the geological time scale, any
primeval radium would have disappeared long ago. Therefore, radium occurs naturally only as a
disintegration product in the three natural radioactive decay series (thorium, uranium, and actinium
series). Radium-226 is a member of the uranium-decay series. Its parent is thorium-230 and its daughter
radon-222. The further decay products, formerly called radium A, B, C, C′, C″, D, and so on, are isotopes
of polonium, lead, bismuth, and thallium.