Frederic Joliot-Curie (Joliot-Curie Jean Frederic)

(1900-1958)
Born March 19, 1900 in Paris, a prosperous merchant family. In 1910 he was sent to a provincial boarding school, and in 1917, after the death of his father, he returned to Paris and entered the famous chemical Lyceum. Lavoisier, and then, in 1920, the Higher School of Physics and Applied Chemistry, where one of his teachers was Paul Langevin. In 1923 he graduated first in her group. Graduate School of Education gave more engineering focus, and Joliot sought to basic sciences, and in 1925 on the advice of the Langevin joined as assistant Maria Sklodowska-Curie at the Radium Institute of Paris University. In 1926 he married Irene, daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, and both husband and wife took the name of Joliot-Curie. In 1930 F.Zholio Curie defended his doctoral thesis on the study of electrochemical properties of polonium.

In 1928 the couple began a systematic study of nuclear reactions occurring in the bombardment of light nuclei a-particles. A good engineer, F.Zholio Curie constructed a sensitive detector of condensation cameras that can record the penetrating radiation. He also managed to prepare a sample with an unusually high concentration of polonium. Investigating the properties of irradiated a-particles of beryllium or boron, the couple discovered that a thin plate of hydrogenous materials increases the initial radiation is almost twice. In 1932, on the basis of these experiments Dzh.Chedvik discovered the neutron. In subsequent years, Joliot-Curie, investigated the properties of neutrons and different reactions in which they participate.

In 1932, K. Anderson discovered the positron, and the couple Joliot-Curie began to study its properties, in 1933 received a photograph of an electron-positron pair, born of g-quanta, and that same year F.Zholio Curie, along with Jacques Thibaud watched her annihilation. In 1934 Joliot-Curie discovered that boron and aluminum emit positrons, not only during irradiation, positron emission continues for a few more minutes. This led them to conclude that aluminum and boron are converted into other radioactive elements: absorbing a-particle, aluminum turns into radioactive phosphorus, and boron - in radioactive nitrogen.

In 1937, while working at the Radium Institute, F.Zholio-Curie was appointed professor at the College de France in Paris. Here he created the Research Center for Nuclear Physics and Chemistry, and participated in the creation of one of the first cyclotrons. In 1940, Columbia University awarded F.Zholio-Curie Gold Medal Barnard. In 1939 he took part in the creation of the atomic heavy water reactor, which purchased from Norway almost the entire stock of heavy water. However, the Second World War began, the Nazis occupied France, and Joliot-Curie barely managed to smuggle the heavy water to England, where British scientists have used it in their own development of nuclear weapons. During the occupation F.Zholio Curie remained in Paris, retained his positions at the Radium Institute and the College de France. Active member of the Resistance movement, he used the capabilities of their laboratories for the manufacture of explosives and radio equipment for the Resistance fighters until 1944, when he himself had to go underground.

After the war F.Zholio-Curie was appointed director of the National Center for Scientific Research, in 1945, persuaded President de Gaulle to create the Atomic Energy Commission and in 1946-1950 led to. However, his refusal to engage in military research and communication with the Communist Party, which he joined in 1942, caused his dismissal from his post. In 1946 F.Zholio-Curie headed the World Federation of Scientific Workers, and in 1950 he was elected chairman of the World Peace Council. In 1956, after the death of Irene, Frederic Joliot-Curie became her successor as director of the Institute of radium and assumed control over the construction of the new Institute of Nuclear Physics in Orsay. F.Zholio-Curie was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and the Medical Academy of France, as well as a foreign member of many scientific societies, including the Academy of Sciences.

Died Frederic Joliot-Curie in Paris on August 14, 1958.