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 graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

. He is often considered the discoverer of the element

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

, though H. W. Kirby disputed this in 1971 and gave credit instead to German chemist Friedrich Oskar Giesel.

Biography

Debierne studied at the elite École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI ParisTech). ESPCI ParisTech Alumni 1893
/ref> He was a student of Charles Friedel, was a close friend of Pierre and

Marie Curie Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (; ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie ( ; ), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was List of female ...

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

, as a result of continuing the work with

pitchblende Uraninite, also known as 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 urani ...

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 1911, he and Marie Curie prepared radium 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.

References

External links

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