Irène Joliot-Curie

Irène Joliot-Curie
Joliot-Curie in the 1920s
Born	Irène Curie (1897-09-12)12 September 1897 Paris, French Third Republic
Died	17 March 1956(1956-03-17) (aged 58) Paris, French Fourth Republic
Education	University of Paris
Known for	Discovering induced radioactivity Positron emission
Spouse	Frédéric Joliot ​ (m. 1926)​
Children	Hélène Pierre
Parents	Pierre Curie Maria Skłodowska
Family	Curie
Awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1935)
Scientific career
Fields	Chemistry Physics
Workplaces	University of Paris Radium Institute
Thesis	Recherches sur les rayons α du polonium : oscillation de parcours, vitesse d'émission, pouvoir ionisant (1925)
Doctoral advisor	Paul Langevin
Doctoral students	Her children Henriette Mathieu-Faraggi
Signature

Irène Joliot-Curie (French: [iʁɛn ʒɔljo kyʁi] ^ⓘ; née Curie; 12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. The couple also discovered positron emission during their research. They were the second married couple, after her parents, to win the prize, adding to the Curie family's unbeaten legacy of five Nobel Prizes.

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 newly established French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) created by de Gaulle and the Provisional Government of the French Republic. She died in Paris on 17 March 1956 from acute leukemia linked to her exposure to polonium and X-rays.

Biography

Early life and education

Irène Curie was born in Paris, France, on 12 September 1897. She was the first of Marie and Pierre's two daughters. Her sister Ève was born in 1904. After they lost their father in April 1906 in a horse-drawn wagon accident, Marie was left to raise them with the help of her father-in-law, Eugene Curie, who had played an active role in their lives since the girls were born. Irène had a close relationship with her grandfather until his death in 1910.

Education was important to Marie and Irène's education began at a school near the Paris Observatory. It was chosen because it had a more challenging curriculum than the school close to the Curies' home. In 1906, it was obvious Irène was talented in mathematics. Her mother chose to focus on that instead of public school. Marie joined forces with a number of eminent French scholars, including prominent French physicists Paul Langevin and Jean Perrin, to form "The Cooperative", which was a private gathering of ten students — Irène included — who were children of the most distinguished academics in France. Each academic contributed to educating these children in their respective homes. The curriculum of The Cooperative was diverse and wide-ranging, and alongside science the students also studied subjects such as sculpture and Chinese language. They were also granted regular time and opportunity to enjoy sports and outdoor activities.

Irène and her sister Ève were sent to Poland to spend the summer with their Aunt Bronia (Marie's sister) in 1911. Irène's education was so rigorous that she still had daily German and trigonometry lessons throughout the break. In 1912, Marie's health was poor; she spent most of the next year and a half in sanitoriums, and her daughters were cared for by a Polish governess. Irène re-entered a more orthodox learning environment by attending high school at the Collège Sévigné in central Paris. From 1914, she attended the Faculty of Science at the Sorbonne to complete a baccalaureate in mathematics and physics but was forced to pause her studies in 1916 as the events of World War I led to new responsibilities for the Curie family.

World War I

Irène (left), her mother and her sister Ève Curie

During the war, Irène took a nursing course and went to work as a nurse radiographer at battlefield hospitals alongside her mother. They supervised 20 mobile X-ray units and set up approximately 200 X-ray centres for injured soldiers.After a few months, Irène was left to work alone at a radiological facility in Belgium. She taught doctors how to locate shrapnel in bodies using radiology and became skilled in repairing the equipment herself. She also trained another 150 women in technical skills for X-ray use in the field. She moved throughout facilities and battlegrounds including two bombsites, Furnes and Ypres, and Amiens. In 1918, she received the Médaille militaire for her assistance in X-ray facilities in France and Belgium.

Irène's radiography work was not without risks. She contracted tuberculosis during the course of her wartime efforts, which would remain a health concern for her over the next two decades. Her heavy exposure to doses of radiation also left her open to the eventual development of other illnesses, such as leukemia, which would much later contribute to her death.

After the war, Irène returned to the Sorbonne in Paris to complete her baccalaureate degree. She went on to become a Doctor of Science in March 1925. Her doctoral thesis was concerned with the alpha decay of polonium, an element discovered by her parents and named after Marie's country of birth, Poland.

Research

Irène and Marie Curie in 1925

In March 1918, Irène Curie joined the Radium Institute in Paris where she initially assisted her mother in her research. She taught radiology courses to students who were in training as medical technicians. During the years she was at the Institute, she mentored a number of the students and researchers, in particular Catherine Chamié, Marthe Klein, Ștefania Mărăcineanu, Marguerite Perey, Angèle Pompéi, Alice Prebil, Elizabeth Rona, Suzanne Veil and Lucienne Wisner.

In 1921, Irène accompanied her mother and her sister Ève on a trip to the United States during which Marie hoped to obtain a gram of radium for her research. In view of her mother's poor health following a heart attack, Irène stepped in to cover some of her assignments, for example by delivering a lecture at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, in late May. On 23 May 1921, on behalf of her mother, she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

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 married on 9 October 1926. They had two children together, Hélène (1927) and Pierre (1932). Both later became celebrated scientists.

Irène Curie in May 1921 on accepting an honorary degree at the University of Pennsylvania on behalf of her mother

During the early 1930s, Joliot-Curie and her husband, Frédéric, combined their research efforts on the study of atomic nuclei. In 1932, thanks to their full access to Marie's polonium, they conducted experiments with gamma rays to identify the positron. Though their experiments identified both the positron and the neutron, they failed to interpret the significance of the results and the discoveries were later claimed by Carl David Anderson and James Chadwick respectively.

In 1933, Joliot-Curie and her husband were the first to calculate accurately the mass of the neutron. The Joliot-Curies continued trying to make a name in the scientific community; in doing so, they developed a new theory based on an experiment in which aluminium was bombarded with alpha rays, leading to their discovery 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. Irène and her husband presented their theory and results to their fellow scientists, but they received criticism of their findings from most of the 45 scientists attending. Fellow scientist Lise Meitner and her colleagues had attempted similar experiments to that of the Joliot-Curies and had not achieved results that would support their findings, and many in the group believed that the Joliot-Curies had rushed or otherwise formed mistaken conclusions.

In 1934, the Joliot-Curies made a 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 succeeded in transforming one element into another by creating radioactive nitrogen from boron, radioactive isotopes of phosphorus from aluminium, and silicon from magnesium. 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 phosphorus isotope is not found in nature and decays emitting a positron. This discovery is formally known as positron emission or beta decay, 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 importance of these scientific successes was somewhat diminished by the death of Marie Curie on 4 July 1934. As a result, Irène took on many of her mother's former responsibilities at the Radium Institute.

Irène and Frederic Joliot-Curie in 1935

The work that Irène's laboratory pioneered, research into radium nuclei, would also help another group of physicists within Germany. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman on 19 December 1938 bombarded uranium with neutrons, but misinterpreted their findings. Lise Meitner 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: the splitting of the nucleus itself, emitting vast amounts of energy. Lise Meitner's now-famous calculations actually 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 couple were active in the organization behind the project, the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA), the French Atomic Energy Commission. Irène was a CEA commissioner while her husband, Frédéric, was its high commissioner. 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.

In 1949 she officially became director of her mother's Institut Curie which she had supported for many years.

Years of working so closely with radioactive materials finally caught up with Joliot-Curie, and she was diagnosed with leukemia. She had been accidentally exposed to polonium 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 deteriorated. She nevertheless continued to work. In 1955, she prepared plans for new physics laboratories at the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, later completed by her husband.

Political views

Anti-fascism, socialism, and communism

The Joliot-Curies were increasingly aware of the growth of the fascist movement during the 1930s and opposed it. Frédéric joined the Socialist Party in 1934, and both he and Irène joined the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes a year later. In 1936 they actively supported the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War. While Irène sympathized with socialist and communist movements — which both had a strong history of supporting feminism in Europe — she felt that her responsibility to the Curie family name meant that she could not declare allegiance to any single political party.

The Joliot-Curies had continued Pierre and Marie's policy of publishing all of their work for the benefit of the global scientific community; however, afraid of the danger that might result should it be developed for military use as Nazi Germany gained power in the late 1930s, they discontinued doing so. On 30 October 1939, they placed all their documentation on nuclear fission in the vaults of the French Academy of Sciences, where it remained until 1949.

For the 220th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Science, Frédéric and Irène visited Moscow. On their return, they sympathized with their Russian colleagues. Frédéric maintained a close connection with the Communist Party. As a result of his political views, Irène was later detained on Ellis Island during a trip to the United States. She had been invited by the Joint Antifascist Refugee Committee to speak in support of refugees from Spain. In 1953, Irène applied for membership in the American Chemical Society and was denied. While the society provided no explanation for her rejection, it was believed by members of the scientific community that American anti-Communist sentiment was responsible. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published a statement of support for Irène the following year, denouncing political interference in scientific inquiry and collaboration.

Feminism

Irène was a passionate member of the feminist movement, especially regarding the sciences. She continually applied to the French Academy of Sciences, an elite scientific organization, knowing that she would be denied membership. She did so to draw attention to the fact they did not accept women in the organization. Irène was involved in many speaking functions, such as International Women's Day conferences in Europe. She was 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).

In 1936, Irène, Cécile Brunschvicg and Suzanne Lacore became the first three women to be appointed French ministers by the French prime minister Léon Blum who belonged to the Popular front. Irène was appointed undersecretary of state for scientific research, in which capacity she helped in founding the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Although she was not particularly keen on a political posting, she accepted the job as "a sacrifice for the feminist cause in France" in order to support women's rights and set an example. She arranged beforehand that she would remain in the position for three months, and then resigned in order to continue her scientific research.

Post-World War II advocacy

Irène Joliot-Curie's political advocacy continued after the war. Together with her sister Ève, in 1946 she attended the trial of the Spanish chemist María Teresa Toral who was accused by Franco of supporting the Republicans. Thanks to their support, her sentence was set at two years imprisonment rather the death sentence or a 30-year prison sentence originally called for. In 1948, during a long strike involving coal miners, French newspapers called on families to assist the strikers by temporarily adopting the children of coal miners until the strike was over. The Joliot-Curies responded by adopting and caring for two young girls.

Irène Joliot-Curie was a member of the World Peace Council. She advocated for peace and played a major role for the French contingent at the 1948 World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace, which promoted the World Peace movement, and in 1950 she added her signature to the Stockholm Appeal in protest against the use of atomic bombs.

Personal life

The Joliot-Curies in the 1940s

Accompanying her mother, sister and husband, Irène spent several summers in Brittany at L'Arcouest near Ploubazlanec, a resort which also attracted other scientists who discussed the issues of the times. As a result, in the 1930s, it became known as "Sorbonne plage" (Sorbonne Beach). The Joliot-Curie couple were also keen on sports. Together with their colleagues, they took part in everything from swimming to hiking, tennis and gymnastics.

After their marriage, Irène and Frédéric used variations of their surnames for different occasions. For social events, they both used "Joliot", but when Irène signed her scientific papers she continued to sign them as "Irène Curie". When publishing political statements or popular articles, the couple went by "Joliot-Curie". While Frédéric sometimes fretted about which name to use, Irène was largely indifferent to the question and was comfortable with both surnames. They had two children, Hélène, born in 1927, and Pierre, born in 1932.

During World War II, Frédéric participated in the French Resistance. Although he made plans to help Irène and their children escape to safety in another country, Irène was firm that they would not leave until Hélène had finished final exams for her baccalaureate degree; after the exam was held in a small village in secret, Irène and both children travelled into Switzerland on foot via the Jura mountains on 6 June 1944. Their journey had the good fortune of coinciding with the date of the D Day invasion, meaning that German soldiers were preoccupied elsewhere that day and did not have as much security along the Swiss border.

Death

Irène Joliot-Curie's gravestone in the cemetery at Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine

In February 1956, during a brief visit to the family's ski chalet in the French Alps, Joliot-Curie began feeling severely ill and returned to Paris, where she was admitted into the hospital at the Radium Institute. She was given a diagnosis of leukemia, a cancer largely suspected to have developed from her years working directly with X-rays and radioactive substances. She died on 17 March 1956 at the age of 58. 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 a pacifict. When the French government arranged for a national funeral to be held in her honour, Irène's family asked for the exclusion of religious and military content. 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 and professor at the University of Paris. Joliot-Curie's son, Pierre Joliot, became a biophysicist with a focus on the study of photosynthesis.

Honours and awards

Nobel Prize

Irène Joliot-Curie received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They were the second married couple, after her parents, to win the prize, adding to the Curie family's unbeaten legacy of four Nobel Prizes shared among five individuals. (In addition to the three prizes in physics and chemistry held by the Curies and Joliot-Curies, Ève Curie's husband Henry Labouisse went on to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.)

As of 2026, she and her mother Marie Curie form the only mother–daughter pair to become Nobel laureates, while Pierre and Irène Curie are the only father-daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes, compared to seven father-son pairs.

Other awards

Irène Curie received the French Médaille militaire (military medal) in 1918 for her work with radiography in World War I.

In 1932, she and Frédéric Joliot-Curie were jointly awarded the Italian Matteucci Medal for physicists.

In 1940, together with her husband, she was awarded the Barnard Medal for Meritorious Service to Science.

She was honoured as an Officer of the French Legion of Honour in 1939. In the early 1950s, she received honorary degrees from the University of Marie Curie-Skłodowska and Jagiellonian University. While she was never admitted to the French Academy of Sciences, she was granted membership in scientific Academies from several other countries, including the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The Prix Joliot-Curie, an annual award recognizing achievements in nuclear physics and particle physics, was named in honour of Joliot-Curie by the Société Française de Physique in 1956. The French government launched the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize, which recognizes women in science, in 2001.

Her name was added to the Monument to the X-ray and Radium Martyrs of All Nations erected in Hamburg, Germany.

In 2026, Joliot-Curie was announced as one of the 72 historical women in STEM whose names were proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. Her mother was also on the list. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes & Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.

Selected publications

In 1928, Irène and her husband Frédéric began to conduct research on atomic nuclei. From 1934, they published papers on important new discoveries, including the creation of radioactive isotopes. This led to the Nobel Prize in 1935 and paved the way for further research covering the fission of heavy metals. In 1954, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of her mother's death, Joliot-Curie was invited by the journal Europe to document her memories and impressions of her mother. It was not published at the time but in 2022 it appeared as a book titled Marie Curie, ma mère.

• Curie, I. (1925) Primary thesis: Recherches sur les rayons α du polonium. Oscillation de parcours, vitesse d'émission, pouvoir ionisant. Secondary thesis suggested by the university: La sursaturation des vapeurs
• Joliot-Curie, I.; Joliot-Curie, J.F. (1932) La projection de noyaux atomiques par un rayonnement très pénétrant
• Joliot-Curie, I.; Joliot-Curie, J.F. (1934) L'électron positif
• Joliot-Curie, J.F.; Joliot-Curie, I. (1935) Radioactivité artificielle
• Joliot.Curie, I.; Walen, R.J; Grégoire, R.; Grinberg, B.; Pontekorvo, B.M. (1938) Physique nucléaire, radioactivité naturelle, transmutations, radioactivité artificielle, neutrons
• Joliot-Curie, I. (1945) Les Radioéléments naturels, propriétés chimiques, préparation, dosage
• Joliot-Curie, I. (1956) Les Progrès récents en radioactivité et en physique nucléaire
• Joliot-Curie, I.; Farage, H. (1955) Autoradiographie par neutrons, dosage séparé de l'uranium et du thorium dans les minéraux
• Joliot-Cuire, J.F.; Joliot-Curie, I. (1961) Oeuvres scientifiques complètes

The following book was first published in 2022:

• Joliot-Curie, Irène, Marie Curie, ma mère

See also

• List of female Nobel laureates
• List of women associated with Marie Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie
• Stefania Maracineanu
• Radioactive (film)
• Timeline of women in science
• Women in chemistry

Further reading

• Opfell, Olga S. (1978). The Lady Laureates: Women Who have Won the Nobel Prize. Metuchen, N.J. & London: Scarecrow Press. pp. 165–182. ISBN 978-0-8108-1161-4.
• Conference (Dec. 1935) for the Nobel prize of F. & I. Joliot-Curie, online and analysed on BibNum [click 'à télécharger' for English version].

External links

• Newspaper clippings about Irène Joliot-Curie in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• Irène Joliot-Curie on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture on 12 December 1935 Artificial Production of Radioactive Elements