The new element practically named itself—not by any color but rather by its extraordinary degree of radio-activity, which multiplied that of uranium a thousandfold. The Curies and their collaborator Bémont thought the difference might be even greater, but they had run out of pitchblende and could go no further till they got more. On the day after Christmas in 1898, Henri Becquerel informed the Académie des Sciences of the discovery of “radium.”
