How Britain fell in love with radioactive material

For most people today radioactivity is synonymous with bright yellow warning signs, explosions and poison. But there was a time when radioactivity was revered, not feared. And when it seemed like everyone in Britain was clamouring for more of it. 

In the late 19th century Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a previously unknown form of powerful radiation that was invisible to the human eye and so mysterious that he simply named it ‘X’. Working from Röntgen’s findings, the French engineer and physicist Henri Becquerel identified the phenomenon of radioactivity – both as a concept and as a force – and Marie Skłodowska Curie would later give it a name.  

In December 1898 Curie identified two new materials, which she named polonium and radium. These natural radioactive elements were shown to be capable of change: spontaneously turning into totally different substances without any intervention. Uranium, for instance, decays into thorium, which in turn becomes radium.