Further work indicated the samples actually contained two new elements we now know as radium and polonium . Between 1899 to 1902, Marie Curie continued to dissolve, filter, and repeatedly crystallized nearly three tons of pitchblende , lifting every kilogram by herself. This was enough to confirm her discovery spectroscopically and determine the exact atomic mass of radium. Detection of the nuclear decay of radium, as indicated by the emanation of alpha , beta , and gamma radiation , was in part responsible for the revolution of physics that occurred between 1895 and 1910, for it had previously thought that atoms were permanent and indestructible entities. Marie Curie was shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry with her husband Pierre Curie for their basic research in radioactivity.
Radium is the heaviest of the alkaline-earth metals .
Like the others in the group, radium is metallic and thus a good conductor of electricity. When freshly cut, it has a brilliant white color and, in time, a nitride coating develops. Virtually all radium is derived from the byproducts of uranium refining operations. Radium is intensely radioactive. It glows in the dark with an eerie bluish light.