Joliot-Curie, Irène (1897–1956) FrenchNuclear
physicist Irène Curie was born in Paris on September
12, 1897, the daughter of the Nobel laureate physicists
Pierre and Marie Curie. Growing up in the Curie family,
Irène had no doubt that she would follow in her famous
parents’ footsteps. First home-schooled, she finished
high school at Collège Sévigné, an independent school
in the center of Paris, and then received a baccalauréat
from the same academy in 1914 and a doctorate of sci-
ence from the Sorbonne in 1925 for her thesis on the
alpha rays of polonium. She served in World War I as a
nurse radiographer. After the war, she joined her mother
as an assistant at the Institute of Radium.
In 1926 she met and married Frédéric Joliot, also an
assistant at the Institute of Radium, and had a daughter,
Hélène, and a son, Pierre. The couple both (and singu-
larly) worked on natural and artificial radioactivity and
nuclear physics, their joint papers published during the
years 1932–34. They confirmed the discovery of the
positron in 1932. In 1933 they bombarded alpha parti-
cles at the stable element boron that created a radioac-
tive compound of nitrogen. They published the results in
the 1934 paper, “Production artificielle d’éléments
radioactifs. Preuve chimique de la transmutation des élé-
ments” (Artificial production of radioactive elements.
Chemical proof of the transmutation of the elements.).
The Nobel Committee recognized the profound implica-
tions of their discovery by awarding both Joliot-Curies
the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 1935 “in recognition of
their synthesis of new radioactive elements.”
The Faculty of Science in Paris had appointed her
as a lecturer in 1932, and in 1937 it conferred on her
the title of professor. The year before, the French gov-
ernment had named her undersecretary of state for
scientific research. In 1938 her research on the action
of neutrons on the heavy elements was important in
the discovery of uranium fission. The next year, the
Legion of Honour inducted her as an officer. During
World War II, Frédéric led the underground resistance
movement as the president of the Front National.
After the war, Irène succeeded her mother as the
director of the Institute of Radium. Also in 1946, she
was named a commissioner for atomic energy, a posi-
tion she retained for six years, during which France
amassed its first atomic stockpile. After the war, she
worked to promote peace as a member of the World
Peace Council. She contributed her energy to women’s
rights as a member of the Comité National de l’Union
des Femmes Françaises.
In 1948 while on a planned fund-raising tour in the
United States to raise money for Spanish refugees, it
was the time of McCarthyism, and she was refused
entry (she was a socialist) and kept in a detention cen-
ter on Ellis Island until the French embassy in Washing-
ton could get her out.
As with her mother, Marie Curie, who died from
sustained overexposure to radiation, Irène Joliot-Curie
also died from overexposure to radiation throughout
her lifetime. She contracted leukemia and died in Paris
on March 17, 1956. Her husband succeeded her as151