The chemical element polonium was named after Poland. Marie Curie and Pierre Curie discovered it in 1898 while investigating radioactive substances in pitchblende.
Marie Curie chose the name “polonium” in honor of Poland, her homeland, which at that time was partitioned among the Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary and Prussia and did not exist as an independent state. The name therefore carried a political as well as scientific meaning.
Polonium has the atomic number 84 and is a highly radioactive metal. Curie’s team identified it before discovering radium later in the same year. Polonium-210 is especially well known because it emits alpha particles and has been used in specialized industrial and scientific applications.