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Which radioactive elements did Marie and Pierre Curie discover in 1898?
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radioactivity
Figure 1: Radioactive decay of beryllium-7 to lithium-7 by electron capture (EC; see text).
In 1898, Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie, discovered two strongly radioactive chemical elements: polonium and radium. These elements occur naturally in uranium minerals. Marie Curie later coined the term radioactivity to describe the spontaneous emission of ionizing, penetrating rays by such atoms.12