What element did Marie Curie name after her homeland Poland?

Marie Curie named polonium after her homeland, Poland. She and Pierre Curie announced the new element in 1898 while investigating why uranium ore called pitchblende was more radioactive than its uranium content could explain.

The name was more than a geographical tribute. Poland was then partitioned among Russia, Prussia, and Austria and did not exist as an independent sovereign state. By naming an element polonium, Marie Curie drew attention to her Polish identity and to Poland’s political absence from the map.

The Curies identified polonium by its intense radioactivity in pitchblende residues. They later announced radium, another new element, in the same year. Their work helped establish radioactivity as a property of atoms and earned Marie Curie the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Polonium is a highly radioactive chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84. The isotope polonium-210 is especially well known. It has practical uses in specialized devices, but its intense radioactivity also makes it extremely hazardous. Radium was another Curie discovery, but it was not named for Poland.