The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935 was awarded jointly to Frédéric Joliot and Irène Joliot-Curie "in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements"
Joliot-Curie, Irene and Frederic Joliot. "Un nouveaux type de radioactivite". In Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris volume 198, Nr. 3, 15 January, 1934. Original printed wrappers, removed from larger bound volume, and printed in Paris by Gauthier-Villars. Pp. 254-256.Very good copy. SOLD
Award ceremony speech, here.
This is the first printing of the first announcement of artifiical radioactivity. Curie and Joliot were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935 "in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements".
"These elegant experiments, which provided the first chemical proof of induced transmutations and showed the possibility of artificially creating radioisotopes of known stable elements, were repeated and extended in the major nuclear physics laboratories of various countries " (DSB).Born on 12 September 1897 in Paris, Irène Curie was the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. "During World War I, she worked as a nurse, helping her mother operate radiography equipment, and then studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne, gaining a doctorate for studying the range of alpha particles. She then went to work for her mother at the Radium Institute. There she met Frédéric Joliot whom she married in 1926. Frédéric Joliot was born on 19 March 1900 in Paris - He joined the Radium Institute in 1925 and obtained his PhD in 1930. Together the Joliot-Curies worked on radioactivity and the transmutation of the elements. Twice they just missed major discoveries: in 1932 when Chadwick beat them to the neutron, and in 1933 when Anderson discovered the positron. However, in 1934, whilst bombarding light elements with alpha particles, the Joliot-Curies noticed that, although proton production stopped when the alpha particle bombardment stopped, another form of radiation continued. The alpha particles had produced an isotope of phosphorus not found in nature. This isotope was radioactive and was decaying through beta-decay" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography)
"Another very important development in the early 1934 by the Joliot-Curies in connection with irradiation of aluminum by alpha particles. The two French scientists detected the production of the recently discovered positrons..."
"However, they soon realized that the positron activity continued after the alpha source was removed and that they had, in fact, discovered positive beta radioactivity. The importance of the discovery of artificial radioactivity was immediately recognized and resulted in a Nobel Prize in chemistry to the Joliot-Curies in 1935. The new phenomenon immediately became widely employed in nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine." (Kragh, Quantum Generations, p. 187)
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