Joliot-Curie, Frédéric (1900-1958)

French physicist. With his wife, Irène Joliot-Curie, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.

Joliot was born in Paris, France, and graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle. He joined the Radium Institute in 1925. In 1937 he became professor of nuclear physics at the Collège de France. He succeeded his wife as director of the Radium Institute in 1956.

Together the Joliot-Curies worked on radioactivity and the transmutation of elements. In 1934, while bombarding light elements with alpha particles, they noticed that although proton production stopped when the alpha particle bombardment stopped, another form of radiation continued. The alpha particles had produced an isotope of phosphorus not found in nature. This isotope was radioactive and was decaying through beta-decay.