Joliot-Curie, Irène (1897-1956)

French physicist, daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. She and her husband Frédéric Joliot were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. She was professor of physics at the Sorbonne from 1937, and director of the Radium Institute 1946-56.

Joliot-Curie was born in Paris, and educated at the Sorbonne. During World War I she worked with her mother in setting up radiography equipment at the front for the wounded. In 1921 she took up a post at her mother's Radium Institute, where she worked on radioactivity, undertaking research that would eventually led others (such as Otto Hahn) to discover nuclear fission. After marrying Frédéric Joliot in 1926, they both adopted the surname Joliot-Curie. A lifelong socialist, she served for four months in the 1937 government of Léon Blum, and was active in the women's pacifist movement. She died at 58 from acute leukaemia, probably brought on by her research into radioactivity. Her daughter Hélène also became a distinguished physicist.