Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium

The fascinating, curious, and sometimes macabre history of radium as seen in its uses in everyday life

Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal.

Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item-a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in-the-dark dance costume-to its role as ...