Born on 12 September 1897 in Paris, France, Irene Curie was

the daughter of the famous scientist, Marie Curie. In 1914, she graduated from the College Sevigne in Gagny and went on to attend the University of Paris. That same year World War I required her to leave her studies temporarily to serve as a nurse radiographer until 1917. In 1918, Curie returned to the University of Paris and she received her Ph.D. in 1925 for her research on alpha particles. Curie and Jean Frederic Joliot met while working with her mother at the Radium Institute and were married in 1926. The couple worked together studying natural and artificial radioactivity and the transmutation of elements.

Irene, with husband Frederic, was already busy in the field, having confirmed the discovery of the positron in 1932. For this they used gamma rays from still scarce purified samples of natural radioactive isotopes, which were first isolated by her parents, Marie and Pierre Curie. Two years later, in 1934, the availability of radioactive substances, so valuable for medical and research purposes, was to start changing dramatically. In that year, Irene and Frederic first demonstrated the creation of an 'artificially' radioactive element, an isotope, of nitrogen:: 10B + 4He ------> 13N + 1n boron(mass 10) + alpha particle(mass 4) ->radioactive nitrogen(mass 13) + neutron This process was repeated with aluminum and magnesium in short order. 27Al + 4He ------> 30P + 1n 24Mg + 4He ------> 27Si + 1n

Formula with aluminum

Formula with plutonium

appliances that havemade experiments

 This discovery was to transfigure the periodic table of

the time, eventually adding more than 400 radioisotopes. Through isolation and concentration of these new 'artificially' radioactive isotopes, many became available within a few years for medicine, research, and eventually weapons. Their discovery fundamentally changed our understanding of the relationships between elements, leading to an understanding of the fission of heavier elements to lighter ones, and the fusion of lighter elements to heavier ones. Surprisingly perhaps, before any of this could transpire, and the significance of this work be fully realized, Irene and Frederick Joliet-Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry a scant year after their work, in 1935, "for their synthesis of new radioactive elements."(3) In later years, they extended their work to the identification of the products of nuclear fission and became embroiled in the surrounding social issues concerning the uses of radioactivity.

Some scientists are theoreticians, some are experimentalists, some are superb administrators. Irene Joliet-Curie was all three. She was the director of the Curie Laboratory, a member of the Commissariat of Atomic energy, and a professor at the Sorbonne. Although she won many awards for her contributions to science, she was never admitted to the French Academy of Science. In 1911, the Insititut de France voted to maintain it's all male status. This apporved institutional policy denied a seat in the Academy to Marie Curie. This same restrictive policy would prevail for an additional four decades.

Irene was an autocrat in the laboratory, exerting the authority of her position to make sure that work done at the Institute was meticulous. Politically, she was a socialist and she demonstrated her belief in social equality on several occasions. Because of continuing frailty due to a continuing battle with tuberculosis, Irene spent most of the World War II years in a convalescent home in Switzerland. Because of concern for her for the safety of her husband and children, she did occasionally return to Paris. In 1943, she was stopped at the Swiss border when she attempted to enter the country at Porrentruy. She spent several days, with hundreds of other refugees fleeing the Nazis, sleeping on a straw mat in a communal room in a detention center. The prefect of the district found out about this and arranged to have her moved, but she refused to be given special treatment, and insisted on remaining until her release.