POLONIUM

Every now and then I get to see a science fiction film.  This time it was called “Transcendence” with Johnny Depp, (Dr. Will Caster, a scientist and his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) who work with a team to create a sentient computer including artificial intelligence.  The story unfolds with Dr. Caster being shot with a polonium laced bullet. Of course, the film continues to extend into a scientific fantasy, but it was the word polonium that perked my curiosity. 

I did some research and found that polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and the atomic number 84, discovered 1898 by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie.  It was named Marie Curie’s native land of Poland (Latin: Polonia).  Poland at that time was under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian partition.  It was Curie’s hope that naming the element after her native land would give it publicity to becoming an independent country.

Marie had left Poland and went to Paris where she eventually continued her studies in physics and chemistry and completed advanced degrees at the University of Paris. Her great contributions in science emerged in collaboration with Pierre when they investigated the cause of pitchblende radioactivity.  Marie decided to investigate uranium rays and in addition to the discovery of polonium, eventually isolated radium.   The naming of radium dates back to about 1899 from the French word in Modern Latin from radius (ray). 

The first experiments in the biological properties of radium began in France and encouraged a new branch of medical science radiumtherapy (in France called Curietherapy).  Later it developed in other countries so that today we have its use in treating many diseases, particularly cancer.  Interesting to note, polonium has been produced in industry and was part of the Manhattan Project’s Dayton Project during World War ll as a crucial part of the implosion-type nuclear weapon design in 1945.    

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in two sciences, physics and chemistry, with a total of seven outstanding awards.

There are a number of biographies devoted to her as well as movie films depicting her life.  She is an icon in scientific history.