Joliot-Curie, Ir�ne, n�e Curie 1897-1956
French physicist and Nobel Prize winner

She was born in Paris, the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, and in 1918 she joined her mother at the Radium Institute in Paris, beginning her scientific research in 1921. In 1926 she married Fr�d�ric Joliot, and they collaborated in studies of radioactivity from 1931. Their work on the emissions of polonium was built on by Sir James Chadwick in his discovery of the neutron. In 1933-34 the Joliot-Curies made the first artificial radioisotope, and it was for this work that they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935. Similar methods led them to make a range of radioisotopes, some of which have proved indispensable in medicine, scientific research and industry. Ir�ne Joliot-Curie became director of the Radium Institute in 1946 and a director of the French Atomic Energy Commission. She died from leukaemia due to long periods of exposure to radioactivity.

Bibliography: Eug�nie Cotton, Les Curie (1963)