educated_at marguerite perey
The ___MASK9___ , metonymically known as the Sorbonne ( its historical house ), was a university in Paris , France . Appearing around 1150 as a corporation associated with the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral school , it was the second - oldest modern university in Europe . Chartered in 1200 by King Philip II ( Philippe - Auguste ) of France and recognised in 1215 by Pope Innocent III , it was often nicknamed after its theology collegiate institution , College of Sorbonne , founded about 1257 by Robert de Sorbon . Polonium is a chemical element with symbol Po and atomic number 84 . A rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes , polonium is chemically similar to selenium and tellurium , though it also shows resemblances to its horizontal neighbors thallium , lead , and bismuth due to its metallic character . Due to the short half - life of all its isotopes , its natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium - 210 ( with a half - life of 138 days ) in uranium ores , as it is the penultimate daughter of natural uranium - 238 . Though slightly longer - lived isotopes exist , they are much more difficult to produce . ___MASK83___ , polonium is more often produced in milligram quantities by the neutron irradiation of bismuth . Due to its intense radioactivity , which results in radiolysis of chemical bonds and immense radioactive self - heating , its chemistry has mostly been investigated on the trace scale only . Marguerite Catherine Perey ( 19 October 1909 -- 13 May 1975 ) was a French physicist and a student of Marie Curie . In 1939 , Perey discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium . In 1962 , she was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences , an honor denied to her mentor Curie . Perey died of cancer in 1975 . Actinium is a radioactive chemical element with symbol Ac ( not to be confused with the abbreviation for an acetyl group ) and atomic number 89 , which was discovered in 1899 . It was the first non - primordial radioactive element to be isolated . Polonium , radium and radon were observed before actinium , but they were not isolated until 1902 . Actinium gave the name to the actinide series , a group of 15 similar elements between actinium and lawrencium in the periodic table . It is also sometimes considered the first of the 7th - period transition metals , although lawrencium is less commonly given that position . Marie Skodowska Curie (; 7 November 18674 July 1934 ), born Maria Salomea Skodowska , was a Polish and naturalized - French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity . She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize , the first person and only woman to win twice , the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences , and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes . She was also the first woman to become a professor at the ___MASK9___ , and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris .