André-Louis Debierne
French physicist
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André-Louis Debierne was a French chemist who, in 1899, discovered the radioactive element actinium. He found it in pitchblende residues after Pierre and Marie Curie had extracted radium from the same ore. Debierne named the element after the Greek word for "ray". Actinium is a highly radioactive, silvery-white metal that glows blue in the dark. It is the prototype for the actinoid series of elements, which share chemical properties with rare-earth elements. Debierne lived from 1874 to 1949.12
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