One of Becquerel's assistants, a young Polish scientist named Maria Sklowdowska (to become Marie Curie after she married Pierre Curie), became interested in the phenomenon of radioactivity. With her husband, she decided to find out if chemicals other than uranium were radioactive. The Curies studied pitchblend, the residue of uranium mining, from the mining region of Joachimstahl sent from the Austrian government. From the ton of pitchblend, the Curies separated 0.10 g of a previously unknown element, radium, in the form of the compound radium chloride. This radium was many times more radioactive than uranium.
By 1902, the world was aware of a new phenomenon called radioactivity and of new elements which exhibited natural radioactivity. For this work, Becquerel and the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. For her subsequent work in radioactivity, Marie Curie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She was the first female Nobel laureate and the only person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes in two different scientific categories.
Further experiments provided information about the characteristics of the penetrating emissions from radioactive substances. It was soon discovered that there were three common types of radioactive emissions. Some radiations could pass easily through aluminum foil up to a centimeter thick, while some were stopped by the foil. The three basic types of radiation were named alpha (α), beta (β), and gamma (γ) radiation.
Eventually, scientists were able to demonstrate experimentally that the alpha particle is a helium nucleus (a particle containing two protons and two neutrons), the beta particle is a high speed, high energy electron originating from the nucleus, and gamma rays are a very high energy form of electromagnetic radiation (even higher energy than X-rays) of nuclear origin.
Explanation: sorry it’s kinda long. Hope it helps you though!
