Mlle. Marguerite Perey of the Curie Institute, Paris, discovered francium in 1939. It is the heaviest known member of the alkali metal series and occurs as a result of an alpha disintegration of ...

Most people obtain a bachelor’s degree before getting their masters, and even that is a prerequisite for a doctorate. Most people, however, don’t discover a new chemical element. Marguerite Perey ...

There is about an ounce of francium in the Earth’s crust. It’s the most unstable of the first 101 elements. It lasts only 45 seconds longer than an episode of Archer. So how did anyone discover it?

When it comes to the periodic table, the United States really blew its chance to make a name for itself. If you look over a map of all the elements named for cities, states, countries, and continents, ...

The periodic table, which arranges elements based on chemical behavior and physical properties, is a triumph of science. Yet the first table, developed in the late 1860s, was riddled with gaps created ...