Polonium years) can be made through the alpha, proton, or deuteron bombardment of lead or bismuth in a cyclotron. Tentatively called "radium F", polonium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, and was named after Marie Curie's native land of Poland (). Poland at the time was under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian partition, and did not exist as an independent country. It was Curie's hope that naming the element after her native land would publicize its lack of independence. Polonium may be the first element named to highlight a political controversy. This element was the first one discovered by
Polonium methylated in living things to create organometallic compounds. Studies investigating the metabolism of polonium-210 in rats have shown that only 0.002 to 0.009% of polonium-210 ingested is excreted as volatile polonium-210. The median lethal dose (LD) for acute radiation exposure is about 4.5 Sv. The committed effective dose equivalent Po is 0.51 µSv/Bq if ingested, and 2.5 µSv/Bq if inhaled. So a fatal 4.5 Sv dose can be caused by ingesting , about 50 nanograms (ng), or inhaling , about 10 ng. One gram of Po could thus in theory poison 20 million people of whom 10 million would die.