The curie is a measure for the amount of radioactive material. It was named after French scientists Marie and Pierre Curie for their landmark research into the nature of radioactivity. The basis for the curie is the radioactivity of one gram of radium. A picocurie is one trillionth of a curie. Radium decays at a rate of about 2.2 trillion disintegrations per minute. Thus, a picocurie (abbreviated as pCi) represents 2.2 disintegrations per minute.