André-Louis Debierne (; 14 July 1874 – 31 August 1949) was a French

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

. He is often considered the discoverer of the element

actinium Actinium is a chemical element with the symbol Ac and atomic number 89. It was first isolated by Friedrich Oskar Giesel in 1902, who gave it the name ''emanium''; the element got its name by being wrongly identified with a substance ...

, though H. W. Kirby disputes this and awards credit instead to German chemist Friedrich Oskar Giesel. Debierne studied at the elite

École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris ESPCI Paris (officially the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la Ville de Paris; ''The City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution'') is a prestigious grande école founded in 1882 by ...

(ESPCI ParisTech). ESPCI ParisTech Alumni 1893
/ref> He was a student of

Charles Friedel Charles Friedel (; 12 March 1832 – 20 April 1899) was a French chemist and mineralogist. Life A native of Strasbourg, France, he was a student of Louis Pasteur at the Sorbonne. In 1876, he became a professor of chemistry and mineralogy at ...

, was a close friend of

Pierre Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

and

Marie Curie Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie ( , , ; born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the fir ...

and was associated with their work. In 1899, he discovered the radioactive element

, as a result of continuing the work with

pitchblende Uraninite, formerly pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2 but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U3O8. Radioactive decay of the uranium causes t ...

that the Curies had initiated. After the death of Pierre Curie in 1906, Debierne helped Marie Curie carry on and worked with her in teaching and research. In 1910, he and Marie Curie prepared

radium Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rat ...

in metallic form in visible amounts. They did not keep it metallic, however. Having demonstrated the metal's existence as a matter of scientific curiosity, they reconverted it into compounds with which they might continue their researches.

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Biographical information
20th-century French chemists 1874 births 1949 deaths Discoverers of chemical elements Actinium ESPCI Paris alumni 19th-century French chemists {{france-chemist-stub