Portrait of Marguerite Perey

Adapted from ⁠an image by Waltercolor (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. This version is shared under the same licence.

1909–1975

Marguerite Perey

Discovered francium in 1939.

Element

87FrFrancium
1939

In 1939 Marguerite Perey, a laboratory assistant at the Curie Institute in Paris, purified actinium and found radiation left over that came from a new element, number 87. She named it francium, after France; it was the last element found in nature.

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