Irène Joliot-Curie (; ; 12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chÄ“m(Ãa)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
and
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
who received the 1935
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry () is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outst ...
with her husband,
Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie (; ; 19 March 1900 – 14 August 1958) was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wife, Irène Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They were t ...
, for their discovery of
induced radioactivity. They were the
second married couple, after her parents, to win the Nobel Prize, adding to the
Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date.
Her mother Marie Skłodowska-Curie and she also form the only mother–daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes whilst Pierre and Irène Curie form the only father-daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes by the same occasion, whilst there are six father-son pairs who have won Nobel Prizes by comparison.
She was also one of the first three women to be a member of a French government, becoming
undersecretary for Scientific Research under the
Popular Front in 1936. Both children of the Joliot-Curies,
Hélène and
Pierre, are also scientists.
In 1945, she was one of the six commissioners of the new
French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) created by de Gaulle and the
Provisional Government of the French Republic
The Provisional Government of the French Republic (PGFR; , GPRF) was the provisional government of Free France between 3 June 1944 and 27 October 1946, following the liberation of continental France after Operations ''Overlord'' and ''Drago ...
. She died in Paris on 17 March 1956 from an
acute leukemia linked to her exposure to
polonium
Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tel ...
and
X-ray
An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...
s.
Biography
Early life and education
Irène was born in Paris, France, on 12 September 1897 and was the first of
Marie and
Pierre's two daughters. Her sister was
Ève, born in 1904.
They lost their father early on in 1906 due to a horse-drawn wagon incident and Marie was left to raise them.
Education was important to Marie and Irène's education began at a school near the Paris Observatory.
This school was chosen because it had a more challenging curriculum than the school nearby the Curie's home.
In 1906, it was obvious Irène was talented in mathematics and her mother chose to focus on that instead of public school.
Marie joined forces with a number of eminent French scholars, including the prominent French physicist
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin (23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the '' Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes'', an anti-fascist ...
, to form "
The Cooperative", which included a private gathering of nine students that were children of the most distinguished academics in France. Each contributed to educating these children in their respective homes.
The curriculum of The Cooperative was varied and included not only the principles of science and scientific research but such diverse subjects as Chinese and sculpture and with great emphasis placed on self-expression and play. Irène studied in this environment for about two years.
Irène and her sister
Ève were sent to Poland to spend the summer with their Aunt Bronia (Marie's sister) when Irène was thirteen.
Irène's education was so rigorous that she still had a German and trigonometry lesson every day of that break.
Irène re-entered a more orthodox learning environment by going back to high school at the
Collège Sévigné in central Paris until 1914. She then went onto the Faculty of Science at the
Sorbonne to complete her
baccalaureate, until 1916 when her studies were interrupted by
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
.
World War I
Irène took a nursing course during college to assist her mother, Marie Curie, in the field as her assistant.
She began her work as a nurse radiographer on the battlefield alongside her mother, but after a few months she was left to work alone at a radiological facility in Belgium.
She taught doctors how to locate shrapnel in bodies using radiology and taught herself how to repair the equipment.
She moved throughout facilities and battlegrounds including two bombsites,
Furnes and
Ypres
Ypres ( ; ; ; ; ) is a Belgian city and municipality in the province of West Flanders. Though
the Dutch name is the official one, the city's French name is most commonly used in English. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres/Ieper ...
, and
Amiens
Amiens (English: or ; ; , or ) is a city and Communes of France, commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme (department), Somme Departments of France, department in the region ...
.
She received a military medal for her assistance in X-ray facilities in France and Belgium.
After the war, Irène returned to the Sorbonne in Paris to complete her second baccalaureate degree in mathematics and physics in 1918.
Irène then went on to work as her mother's assistant, teaching radiology at the
Radium Institute, which had been built by her parents.
Her doctoral thesis was concerned with the
alpha decay
Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus). The parent nucleus transforms or "decays" into a daughter product, with a mass number that is reduced by four and an a ...
of
polonium
Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tel ...
, the element discovered by her parents (along with radium) and named after Marie's country of birth, Poland. Irène became a Doctor of Science in 1925.
Research

As she neared the end of her doctorate in 1924, Irène Curie was asked to teach the precision laboratory techniques required for radiochemical research to the young chemical engineer
Frédéric Joliot, whom she would later wed. From 1928 Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric combined their research efforts on the study of atomic nuclei.
In 1932, Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric had full access to Marie's polonium. Experiments were done using gamma rays to identify the
positron
The positron or antielectron is the particle with an electric charge of +1''elementary charge, e'', a Spin (physics), spin of 1/2 (the same as the electron), and the same Electron rest mass, mass as an electron. It is the antiparticle (antimatt ...
.
Though their experiments identified both the
positron
The positron or antielectron is the particle with an electric charge of +1''elementary charge, e'', a Spin (physics), spin of 1/2 (the same as the electron), and the same Electron rest mass, mass as an electron. It is the antiparticle (antimatt ...
and the
neutron
The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , that has no electric charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. The Discovery of the neutron, neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932, leading to the discovery of nucle ...
, they failed to interpret the significance of the results and the discoveries were later claimed by
Carl David Anderson
Carl David Anderson (September 3, 1905 – January 11, 1991) was an American particle physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Victor Francis Hess for his discovery of the positron.
Biography
Anderson was born in New York Cit ...
and
James Chadwick
Sir James Chadwick (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English nuclear physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired t ...
respectively.
These discoveries would have secured greatness indeed, as together with
J. J. Thomson's discovery of the
electron
The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...
in 1897, they finally replaced
John Dalton
John Dalton (; 5 or 6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He introduced the atomic theory into chemistry. He also researched Color blindness, colour blindness; as a result, the umbrella term ...
's
model
A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , .
Models can be divided in ...
of atoms as solid spherical particles.
However, in 1933, Joliot-Curie and her husband were the first to calculate the accurate mass of the neutron.
The Joliot-Curies continued trying to get their name into the scientific community; in doing so they developed a new theory from an interesting experiment they conducted. During an experiment bombarding aluminium with alpha rays, they discovered that only protons were detected. Based on the undetectable electron and positron pair, they proposed that the protons changed into neutrons and positrons.
Later in October 1933, this new theory was presented to the Seventh
Solvay Conference. The Solvay Conferences consisted of prominent scientists in the physics and chemistry community.
Irene and her husband presented their theory and results to their fellow scientists, but they received criticism of their finding from most of the 46 scientists attending.
However they were able to build on the controversial theory later on.
In 1934, the Joliot-Curies finally made the discovery that sealed their place in scientific history. Building on the work of Marie and Pierre Curie, who had isolated naturally occurring radioactive elements, the Joliot-Curies realised the alchemist's dream of turning one element into another: creating radioactive
nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...
from
boron
Boron is a chemical element; it has symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the boron group it has three ...
, radioactive isotopes of
phosphorus
Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly Reactivity (chemistry), reactive and are therefore never found in nature. They can nevertheless be prepared ar ...
from aluminium, and
silicon
Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid (sometimes considered a non-metal) and semiconductor. It is a membe ...
from
magnesium
Magnesium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 ...
. Irradiating the natural stable isotope of aluminium with
alpha particles (i.e. helium nuclei) resulted in an
unstable isotope of phosphorus:
27Al +
4He →
30P +
1n.
This phosporus isotope is not found in nature and decays emitting a positron. This discovery is formally known as
positron emission
Positron emission, beta plus decay, or β+ decay is a subtype of radioactive decay called beta decay, in which a proton inside a radionuclide nucleus is converted into a neutron while releasing a positron and an electron neutrino (). Positron emi ...
or
beta decay
In nuclear physics, beta decay (β-decay) is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits a beta particle (fast energetic electron or positron), transforming into an isobar of that nuclide. For example, beta decay of a neutron ...
, where a proton in the radioactive nucleus changes to a neutron and releases a positron and an electron neutrino. By then, the application of radioactive materials for use in medicine was growing and this discovery allowed radioactive materials to be created quickly, cheaply, and plentifully. The Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 brought with it fame and recognition from the scientific community and Joliot-Curie was awarded a professorship at the Faculty of Science.
The work that Irène's laboratory pioneered, research into radium nuclei, would also help another group of physicists within Germany.
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and ...
and
Fritz Strassman on 19 December 1938 bombarded uranium with neutrons, but misinterpreted their findings.
Lise Meitner
Elise Lise Meitner ( ; ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission.
After completing her doctoral research in 1906, Meitner became the second woman ...
and Otto Frisch would theoretically correct Hahn and Strassmann's findings, and after replicating their experiment based on Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard's theory that he had confided to Meitner back in 1933, confirmed on 13 January 1939 that Hahn and Strassmann had indeed observed
nuclear fission
Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactiv ...
: the splitting of the nucleus itself, emitting vast amounts of energy. Lise Meitner's now-famous calculations actually disproved Irène's results and proved that nuclear fission was possible and replicable.
In 1948, using work on nuclear fission, the Joliot-Curies along with other scientists created the first French nuclear reactor.
The Joliot-Curies were a part of the organization in charge of the project, the Atomic Energy Commission, ''
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique'' (CEA). Irène was the commissioner of the CEA and Irène's husband, Frédéric, was the director of the CEA.
The reactor,
Zoé (Zéro énergie Oxyde et Eau lourde) used nuclear fission to generate five kilowatts of power.
This was the beginning of nuclear energy as a source of power for France.
Years of working so closely with radioactive materials finally caught up with Joliot-Curie and she was diagnosed with
leukemia
Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia; pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and produce high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or '' ...
.
She had been accidentally exposed to
polonium
Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tel ...
when a sealed capsule of the element exploded on her laboratory bench in 1946. Treatment with antibiotics and a series of operations relieved her suffering temporarily but her condition continued to deteriorate. Despite this, Joliot-Curie continued to work and in 1955 drew up plans for new physics laboratories at the
Orsay Faculty of Sciences, which is now a part of the
Paris-Saclay University, south of Paris.
Political views
The Joliot-Curies had become increasingly aware of the growth of the fascist movement.
They opposed its ideals and joined the
Socialist Party in 1934, the ''
Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes'' a year later, and in 1936 they actively supported the
Republican faction in the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
.
In the same year, Joliot-Curie was appointed Undersecretary of State for Scientific Research by the French government, in which capacity she helped in founding the ''Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique''.
Frédéric and Irène visited Moscow for the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the
Russian Academy of Science and returned sympathizing with Russian colleagues. Frédéric's close connection with the
Communist Party caused Irène to later be detained on
Ellis Island
Ellis Island is an island in New York Harbor, within the U.S. states of New Jersey and New York (state), New York. Owned by the U.S. government, Ellis Island was once the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United State ...
during her third trip to the US, coming to speak in support of Spanish refugees, at the
Joint Antifascist Refugee Committee's invitation.
The Joliot-Curies had continued Pierre and Marie's policy of publishing all of their work for the benefit of the global scientific community, but afraid of the danger that might result should it be developed for military use, they stopped: on 30 October 1939, they placed all of their documentation on nuclear fission in the vaults of the French Academy of Sciences, where it remained until 1949.
Joliot-Curie's political career continued after the war and she became a commissioner in the ''Commissariat à l'énergie atomique''.
However, she still found time for scientific work and in 1946 became director of her mother's ''
Institut Curie''.
Joliot-Curie became actively involved in promoting women's education, serving on the National Committee of the Union of French Women (''Comité National de l'Union des Femmes Françaises'') and the
World Peace Council. The Joliot-Curies were given memberships to the French ''
Légion d'honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...
''; Irène as an officer and Frédéric as a commander, recognising his earlier work for the resistance.
Personal life

Irène and Frédéric hyphenated their surnames to Joliot-Curie after they married in 1926. The Joliot-Curies had two children,
Hélène, born eleven months after they were married, and
Pierre, born in 1932.
Between 1941 and 1943 during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Joliot-Curie contracted
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
and was forced to spend time convalescing in Switzerland.
Concern for her own health together with the anguish of her husband's being in the resistance against the German troops and her children in occupied France was hard to bear.
She did make several dangerous visits back to France, enduring detention by German troops at the Swiss border on more than one occasion. Finally, in 1944, Joliot-Curie judged it too dangerous for her family to remain in France and she took her children back to Switzerland.
Later in September 1944, after not hearing from Frédéric for months, Irene and her children were finally able to rejoin him.
Irène fought through these struggles to advocate for her own personal views.
She was a passionate member of the feminist movement, especially regarding the sciences, and also advocated for peace. She continually applied to the
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...
, an elite scientific organization, knowing that she would be denied. She did so to draw attention to the fact they did not accept women in the organization.
Irène was also involved in many speaking functions such as the International Women's Day conference.
She also played a big role for the French contingent at the
World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace, which promoted the World Peace movement.
In 1948, during a strike involving coal miners, Joliot-Curie reached out to Paris Newsletters to convince families to temporarily adopt the children of the coal miners during the strike. The Joliot-Curies adopted two girls during that time.
Death
In 1956, after a final convalescent period in the French Alps, Joliot-Curie was admitted to the Curie Hospital in Paris, where she died on 17 March at the age of 58 from leukemia, possibly due to radiation from
polonium-210
Polonium-210 (210Po, Po-210, historically radium F) is an isotope of polonium. It undergoes alpha decay to stable 206Pb with a half-life of 138.376 days (about months), the longest half-life of all naturally occurring polonium isotopes (210– ...
.
Frédéric's health was also declining, and he died in 1958 from liver disease, which too was said to be the result of overexposure to radiation.
Joliot-Curie was an atheist and anti-war.
When the French government held a national funeral in her honor, Irène's family asked to have the religious and military portions of the funeral omitted.
Frédéric was also given a national funeral by the French government.
Joliot-Curie's daughter,
Hélène Langevin-Joliot, went on to become a
nuclear physicist
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter.
Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...
and professor at the
University of Paris
The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...
. Joliot-Curie's son,
Pierre Joliot, went on to become a
biochemist
Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of ...
at the
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...
.
Notable honours
* Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for the discovery of artificial radioactivity with Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
* Barnard Gold Medal for Meritorious Service to Science in 1940 with Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
* Officer of the Legion of Honor.
Her name was added to the ''
Monument to the X-ray and Radium Martyrs of All Nations'' erected in
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
, Germany.
See also
*
List of female Nobel laureates
The Nobel Prizes are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel#Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to Mankind." Additionally, the Nobel Mem ...
*
Stefania Maracineanu
*
''Radioactive'' (film)
*
Timeline of women in science
*
Women in chemistry
References
Further reading
*
* Conference (Dec. 1935) for the Nobel prize of F. & I. Joliot-Curie, online and analysed on ''BibNum''
lick 'à télécharger' for English version/small>.
External links
*
* including the Nobel Lecture on 12 December 1935 ''Artificial Production of Radioactive Elements''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joliot-Curie, Irene
1897 births
1956 deaths
20th-century French chemists
20th-century French physicists
20th-century French women scientists
Curie family
Deaths from leukemia in France
French women activists
French atheists
French Nobel laureates
French people of Polish descent
French socialist feminists
French socialists
French women chemists
French women physicists
Nobel laureates in Chemistry
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Nuclear chemists
Paris-Saclay University people
Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Grunwald, 3rd class
Scientists from Paris
University of Paris alumni
Women Nobel laureates