Polonium was discovered by Marie Curie, a Polish chemist, in 1898. She discovered polonium from pitchblende. Pitchblende is a material that contains uranium. After noticing that the pitchblende was more radioactive than the Uranium in it, she reasoned that pitchblende must contain at least one other radioactive element. She separated and dissolved all of the other elements in the pitchblende until she was able to single out the one unknown element. She named it Polonium after her home country, Poland.