Radium chemicals and cause radioluminescence. Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. They extracted the radium compound from uraninite and published the discovery at the French Academy of Sciences five days later. Radium was isolated in its metallic state by Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the electrolysis of radium chloride in 1911. In nature, radium is found in uranium and (to a lesser extent) thorium ores in trace amounts as small as a seventh of a gram per ton of uraninite. Radium is not necessary for living organisms, and adverse health
Radium-223 Radium-223 Radium-223 (Ra-223, Ra) is an isotope of radium with an 11.4-day half-life, in contrast to the more common isotope radium-226, discovered by the Curies, which has a 1601-year half-life. The principal use of radium-223, as a radiopharmaceutical to treat metastatic cancers in bone, takes advantage of its chemical similarity to calcium, and the short range of the alpha radiation it emits. Although radium-223 is formed naturally in trace amounts by the decay of uranium-235, it is generally made artificially, by exposing natural radium-226 to neutrons to produce radium-227, which decays with a 42-minute half-life to actinium-227. Actinium-227 (half-life 21.8