Irène Joliot-Curie

Irène Joliot-Curie was a French radiochemist and nuclear physicist who continued the extraordinary scientific lineage of her parents, Marie and Pierre Curie. During World War I, at just seventeen years of age, Irène joined her mother on the battlefront operating mobile X-ray radiography units ('petites Curies') to examine wounded French soldiers.

Joining the Radium Institute in Paris, she married fellow researcher Frédéric Joliot in 1926. In 1934, while bombarding aluminum, boron, and magnesium targets with alpha particles from a powerful polonium source, they observed that aluminum continued to emit positrons even after the alpha particle source was removed. They had discovered artificial (induced) radioactivity, synthesizing radioactive phosphorus-30 from stable aluminum. This historic discovery proved that radioactive isotopes can be artificially created, transforming modern medicine, cancer radiotherapy, and radioactive tracing, and earning the couple the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1936, Irène was appointed Undersecretary of State for Scientific Research in Léon Blum's government, advocating for women's scientific education.