Inspired by Henri Becquerel's discovery of spontaneous radioactivity, Marie and Pierre Curie succeed in isolating radium on this date in 1898. John Dalton is credited with the discovery of the atom and J.J. Thomson with the discovery of the electron.

How Did Marie Curie Discover Radium? Well, Marie Curie didn’t invent radium, of course! She began this study based on the work of another scientist, …
Radium has been around since long before the Earth was ever formed. Marie and Pierre Curie did not discover the atom. As Marie Curie once said, “I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.” We need to take a closer look at how Marie and Pierre Curie discovered polonium and radium before we can decide whether she was right or if, perhaps, it might have been better that the discoveries that ushered in the Atomic Age had never been made. Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded half the prize for their research on the radiation phenomena discovered by Becquerel. The division of work between the Curies was largely split into chemistry for Marie and physics for Pierre.

It is a natural radioactive decay product of uranium. In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Becquerel for ”the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena.”The common historical unit for radioactivity is the curie, in honor of the pair. And Marie was proven right: in 1898 the Curies discovered two new radioactive elements: radium (named after the Latin word for ray) and polonium (named after Marie… Marie Curie discovered radium by carefully isolating radioactive elements in a material called pitchblende, a natural ore that contains uranium and thorium. Pierre Curie was instrumental with Marie Curie in discovering both polonium 6 and radium 7, but besides his several joint papers with her, he also published alone and with other authors.