Who discovered and named the element francium in 1939?
Francium other elements in its periodic table column, it is assumed that francium would appear as a highly reactive metal, if enough could be collected together to be viewed as a bulk solid or liquid. Obtaining such a sample is highly improbable, since the extreme heat of decay (the half-life of its longest-lived isotope is only 22 minutes) would immediately vaporize any viewable quantity of the element. Francium was discovered by Marguerite Perey in France (from which the element takes its name) in 1939. It was the last element first discovered in nature, rather than by synthesis. Outside the laboratory, francium
Francium to be named after France. It was assigned the symbol Fa, but this abbreviation was revised to the current Fr shortly thereafter. Francium was the last element discovered in nature, rather than synthesized, following hafnium and rhenium. Further research into francium's structure was carried out by, among others, Sylvain Lieberman and his team at CERN in the 1970s and 1980s. Fr is the result of the alpha decay of Ac and can be found in trace amounts in uranium minerals. In a given sample of uranium, there is estimated to be only one francium atom for every 1 × 10