Frederic Joliot-Curie was a French physicist and Nobel laureate, who, along with his wife Irene Joliot-Curie, is credited with the discovery of artificial radioactivity. Frederic was born in France on 19th March, 1900. In 1925, he became an assistant to Marie Curie, at the Radium Institute and later got married to Curie’s daughter Irene Curie.
In 1934, the husband and wife duo discovered artificial radioactivity. The discovery was a milestone in science. For the same, they bombarded boron, aluminium, and magnesium with alpha particles. On bombardment, they obtained radioactive isotopes of elements not ordinarily radioactive. Since these elements were not found naturally, they decomposed easily, emitting positive and negative electrons. In 1935, for their discovery of artificial radioactivity, Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
It was after the discovery of the artificially produced isotopes that the possibility of using them to follow chemical changes and physiological processes were realized. Frederic Joliot-Curie died on 14th August 1958.