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Portrait of Irène Joliot-Curie

Science · Chemistry

Irène Joliot-Curie

1897–1956 · French

Radiochemistry; nuclear physics

Irène Joliot-Curie, elder daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric Joliot for discovering artificial radioactivity. She and her mother are the only mother and daughter both to have won Nobel Prizes. In 1936 she became one of the first women to serve in a French government, and she later directed the Radium Institute in Paris.

How to spot them

  • ▸Daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie; wife of Frédéric Joliot
  • ▸Artificial (induced) radioactivity, 1934: aluminium bombarded with alpha particles
  • ▸Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935, shared with her husband
  • ▸Minister in Léon Blum's Popular Front government, 1936

Key discoveries & works

Discovery of artificial radioactivity (1934)

With Frédéric Joliot: alpha particles fired at aluminium produced radioactive phosphorus

Teenage X-ray radiographer alongside her mother in the First World War (1914–1918)

Helped operate X-ray equipment for examining wounded soldiers

Under-Secretary of State for Scientific Research in the Popular Front government (1936)

One of three women in Léon Blum's government, before French women could vote

Key ideas

  • Showed that stable elements could be made radioactive artificially, opening the way to man-made radioisotopes for medicine and research
  • Experiments by the couple came close to identifying the neutron and the positron, discoveries credited to Chadwick and Anderson

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Paris in 1897; died there of leukaemia in 1956, probably linked to her long exposure to radiation
  • •She and Frédéric Joliot married in 1926 and both adopted the surname Joliot-Curie
  • •Counting Marie twice, Pierre, Irène and Frédéric, the Curie family account for five Nobel awards
  • •Became director of the Radium Institute in Paris in 1946
  • •Served as a commissioner of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) after the Second World War
  • •Her children Hélène Langevin-Joliot and Pierre Joliot both became scientists

Drill it — 6 cards

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Sources