
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.
Keep exploring
Where the dates and stories on this page come from; each event on the timeline links to its own source.
- Marguerite PereyEncyclopaedia Britannica
- FranciumRoyal Society of Chemistry
- Marguerite PereyWikipedia