Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie discovered artificial radioactivity- synthesising radioactive elements in the laboratory. Such elements are now used in tens of millions of medical procedures every year. Their use has saved mil-lions of lives.
Irene Joliot-Curie was born in Paris as the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. Irene worked with her mother to provide mobile X-ray units during World War I.
She later worked at the institute that her parents had founded. It was there that she conducted her Nobel Prize awarded work. This made the Curies- the family with the most Nobel laureates to date.
The Joliot-Curies missed winning the Nobel twice earlier, for the couple had found proof of the neutron, the missing component of atomic nuclei, as well as the positron, the electron’s anti-particle counterpart, thus proving the existence of anti-matter. However, they failed to recognise the significance of their discoveries.
Irene Joliot-Curie died on 17th March 1956. Frederic died two years after Irene’s death.