Frédéric Joliot-Curie

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Irène Joliot-Curie

Library of Congress

[b. Paris, September 12, 1897, d. Paris, March 17,1956]; [b. Paris, March 19, 1900, d. Paris, August 14, 1958]

The Joliot-Curie husband-and-wife team found a way to create radioactive isotopes of elements whose common isotopes are stable, beginning with radioactive phosphorus. These artificial isotopes have become the main sources of radioactivity for medicine and industry.

The French physicist Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900-1958) discovered artificial radioactivity and the emission of neutrons in nuclear fission.

Frédéric Joliot was born in Paris on March 19, 1900, the youngest of six children whose father had served in the militia of the Paris Commune 30 years earlier. While a student of Paul Langevin at the School of Physics and Chemistry in Paris, he received in 1925 an assistantship at the laboratory of the Radium Institute of Marie Curie, the discoverer of radioactivity. There he met and the next year married Irène Curie, the elder daughter of Madame Curie, who pursued her research at her mother's laboratory, and added his wife's surname to his own.

The union of Irène and Frédéric constituted in the history of science an outstanding example of husband-wife teamwork. Among the 26 papers published jointly by the Joliot-Curies during the first 10 years of their partnership was the 1932 paper announcing a penetrating radiation from beryllium when bombarded with alpha rays. In a 1934 paper they disclosed their greatest discovery, the artificial production of radioactive elements. They achieved this by bombarding certain light elements, such as aluminum, boron, and magnesium, with alpha radiation. The significance of this discovery was that it allowed scientists to study more systematically the patterns of nuclear transformations. For this achievement they received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935.

Two years later Joliot-Curie, as newly appointed professor at the Collège de France, launched the development of a research center in nuclear physics. He and his collaborators established for the first time that approximately three fast neutrons were produced when a uranium atom was fissioned by slow neutrons. From this they concluded shortly afterward that a chain reaction in uranium was a distinct possibility.

After World War II Joliot-Curie's scientific activity largely concerned the reorganization of French atomic and nuclear research. At his recommendation the French government set up the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, on which Joliot-Curie served as high commissioner. He had to resign from this post in 1950 because of his most vocal advocacy of the aims and policies of the French Communist party, of which he had been a member since 1942. His last 8 years were spent in directing research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and at the Collège de France, where during his tenure he offered 13 different courses in advanced physics. Upon the death of his wife in 1956, Joliot-Curie succeeded her as the director of the Curie Laboratory of the Radium Institute. His last contribution to the cause of French science, a new and large nuclear research center at Orsay, had just become operational when he died in Paris on Aug. 14, 1958.

Further Reading

The most accessible though highly partisan account of Joliot-Curie's life and work in English is Pierre Biquard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie (trans. 1965). Shorter, but scientifically informative, is the biographical essay by P. M. S. Blackett in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 6 (1960).

Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Born	19 March 1900 Paris, France
Died	14 August 1958 (aged 58) Paris, France
Nationality	France
Fields	Physics
Alma mater	School of Chemistry and Physics of the city of Paris
Known for	Atomic nuclei
Notable awards	Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1935)

Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie (19 March 1900 – 14 August 1958) was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Career 1.3 Post-war 1.4 Personal life 2 Legacy 3 External links 4 References

Biography

Early years

Born in Paris, France, he was a graduate of the School of Chemistry and Physics of the city of Paris. In 1925 he became an assistant to Marie Curie, at the Radium Institute. He fell in love with Irène Curie, and soon after their marriage in 1926 they both changed their surnames to Joliot-Curie. At the insistence of Marie, Joliot-Curie obtained a second baccalauréat, a bachelor's degree, and a doctorate in science, doing his thesis on the electrochemistry of radio-elements.

Career

While a lecturer at the Paris Faculty of Science, he collaborated with his wife on research on the structure of the atom, in particular on the projection of nuclei, which was an essential step in the discovery of the neutron. In 1935 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In 1937 he left the Radium Institute to become a professor at the Collège de France working on chain reactions and the requirements for the successful construction of a nuclear reactor that uses controlled nuclear fission to generate energy through the use of uranium and heavy water. Joliot-Curie was one of the scientists mentioned in Albert Einstein's letter to President Roosevelt as one of the leading scientists on the course to chain reactions. The Second World War, however, largely stalled Joliot's research, as did his subsequent post-war administrative duties.

Stamp Issued by DDR commemorating Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

At the time of the Nazi invasion in 1940, Joliot-Curie managed to smuggle his working documents and materials to England with Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski. During the French occupation he took an active part in the French Resistance as a member of the National Front.

Post-war

After the Liberation, he served as director of the French National Center for Scientific Research and became France's first High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. In 1948 he oversaw the construction of the first French atomic reactor. A devout communist, he was relieved of his duties in 1950 for political reasons. Joliot-Curie was also one of the eleven signatories to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955. Although he retained his professorship at the Collège de France, on the death of his wife in 1956, he took over her position as Chair of Nuclear Physics at the Sorbonne.

Joliot-Curie was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Medicine and named a Commander of the Legion of Honour, He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951 for his work as president of the World Council of Peace.

Personal life

Frédéric and Irène hyphenated their surnames to Joliot-Curie after they married 1926. Eleven months later, their daughter Hélène, was born, who would also become a noted physicist. Their son, Pierre, a biologist, was born in 1932. He devoted the last years of his life to the creation of a centre for nuclear physics at Orsay, which is where his children were educated.

Legacy

The crater Joliot on the Moon is named after him.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

• Annotated bibliography for Frederic Joliot from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

References

• Nobel Foundation Biography
• Atomic Archive Biography
• 1958 obituary from Le Monde
• Michel Pinault, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2000, 712p.
• Pierre Biquard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie et l'énergie atomique, Seghers, Paris, 1961

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Chemistry Theodor Svedberg (1926) · Heinrich Wieland (1927) · Adolf Windaus (1928) · Arthur Harden / Hans von Euler-Chelpin (1929) · Hans Fischer (1930) · Carl Bosch / Friedrich Bergius (1931) · Irving Langmuir (1932) · Harold Urey (1934) · Frédéric Joliot-Curie / Irène Joliot-Curie (1935) · Peter Debye (1936) · Walter Haworth / Paul Karrer (1937) · Richard Kuhn (1938) · Adolf Butenandt / Leopold Ružička (1939) · George de Hevesy (1943) · Otto Hahn (1944) · Artturi Virtanen (1945) · James B. Sumner / John Northrop / Wendell Meredith Stanley (1946) · Robert Robinson (1947) · Arne Tiselius (1948) · William Giauque (1949) · Otto Diels / Kurt Alder (1950) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

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