History of chemistry element among the fractions that resulted. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. On December 21, 1898, the Curies detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende. They presented this finding to the French Academy of Sciences on December 26, proposing that the new element be called radium. The Curies then went to work isolating polonium and radium from naturally occurring compounds to prove that they were new elements. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram
Polonium hydride metal and nascent hydrogen may produce polonium hydride. Polonium hydride is a more covalent compound than most metal hydrides because polonium straddles the border between metals and metalloids and has some nonmetallic properties. It is intermediate between a hydrogen halide like hydrogen chloride and a metal hydride like stannane. It should have properties similar to that of hydrogen selenide and hydrogen telluride, other borderline hydrides. It is very unstable at room temperature and must be stored at freezer temperatures to prevent reversion to elemental polonium and hydrogen; this is because it is an endothermic compound, like the lighter hydrogen telluride