Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie

Historical milestones

1897
12 September, birth of Irène Curie.

1900
19 March, birth of Frédéric Joliot.

1915-1918
During the Great War, Irène was trained by her mother and became a radiology nurse at the front.

1918
Irène graduated in the physical sciences and began her research work in the Curie Laboratory.

Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie in 1935 ©ACJC

1923
Frédéric graduated top of his year in physics, at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris (EPCI).

1924
Frédéric became Marie Curie's personal preparator in December.

1925
Irène defended her thesis on polonium radiation on March 27.

1926
Frédéric and Irène married on 4 October.

1927
Birth of their daughter Hélène.

1929-1935
Irène and Frédéric worked together. They studied the neutron and positive electrons.

Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie in their physics laboratory at the Radium Institute (1932) ©ACJC

1930
On March 17, Frédéric defended his thesis on the electrochemistry of radioactive elements.

1932
Birth of their son, Pierre.

1934
Frédéric and Irène discovered artificial radioactivity in January.
(Marie Curie died in July.)

1935
In December, Frédéric and Irène received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (for the discovery of artificial radioactivity).

1935-1939
At the Radium Institute, Irène worked with Pavlé Savitch on radioactive elements produced when thorium and uranium nuclei are bombarded with neutrons.

1936
Although women did not have the right to vote in France, Irène was appointed under-secretary of state for scientific research in the Front Populaire government. She was one of the first three women to participate in government.

1937
Irène was appointed assistant professor and then full professor (without chair) at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris.
Professor at the Collège de France, Frédéric was appointed director of the CNRS Atomic Synthesis Laboratory at Ivry.

1939-1940
With Hans Halban, Lew Kowarski and Francis Perrin, Frédéric worked on uranium fission and chain reaction. In 1940, they applied for patents on the utilization of atomic energy.

1941-1944
Frédéric was president of the Front National (members of the resistance).

1943
Frédéric was elected member of the Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Medicine.

1944-1945
Frédéric was appointed director of the CNRS.

1946
Irène was appointed director of the Curie Laboratory of the Radium Institute.

1945-1950
At the request of Général de Gaulle, Frédéric created the CEA (French Atomic Energy Commission). He was the first high commissioner for atomic energy. In 1948, the first French nuclear reactor, ZOE, was put into operation by the CEA team.
Frédéric was dismissed from the CEA in 1950.

1946-1951
Irène was titular professor of general physics and radioactivity at the Paris Faculty of Sciences. She was also atomic energy commissioner.

1949
Frédéric was appointed president of the World Peace Council.

1956
Irène Joliot-Curie died on March 17 as a result of leukemia (state funeral).
Frédéric replaced his wife as director of the Radium Institute's Curie Laboratory and was appointed professor at the Faculty Paris of Sciences.

1958
Frédéric participated in the creation of the Nuclear Physics Institute at Orsay.
Death of Frédéric Joliot on August 14 (state funeral).


Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a scientific couple

Frédéric Joliot

Jean-Frédéric Joliot was born on 19 March 1900 in Paris, into a Protestant family from Alsace. His father was a well-to-do storekeeper. He had two older sisters and one elder brother.

Frédéric was a lively, imaginative and impulsive child. After primary school, he entered the Lycée Lakanal at Sceaux, and then the Ecole Lavoisier in Paris. A brilliant gymnast and just average high-school student, he only began to take an interest in physics and chemistry at the time of the baccalaureate.

Like many youngsters, he set up a small laboratory in the family home, in the bathroom, and decorated the walls with pictures of the scientists he admired. Among them was an engraving of Pierre and Marie Curie in front of their instruments. At this time, little did Frédéric know that he too would become a physicist and then marry one of the famous couple's daughters.

Frédéric's brother Henri, then aged 25, was mobilized in 1914 and was killed in the first days of the war. His loss deeply marked Frédéric Joliot.


The meeting with Marie Curie...

Frédéric Joliot in the Marie Curie Laboratory at the Radium Institute ©ACJC

Frédéric prepared for the entrance examinations of the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, where Pierre Curie had taught and where the Curies had discovered polonium and radium. Paul Langevin was then director of studies. Frédéric passed the entrance exams in 1919, but ill health soon forced him to interrupt his studies. He resumed the following year and his classmate Pierre Biquard became his best friend. He first chose to study chemistry, but then at the last minute switched to physics. In 1923, he graduated at the top of his class and then worked for a while in a Luxembourg steelworks. He left for his military service and shortly before the end of his tour of duty Paul Langevin introduced him to Marie Curie, who immediately took him on as her personal preparator at the Radium Institute, in December 1924.

Frédéric Joliot holding part of an ionization chamber at the Radium Institute (1932) ©ACJC

While working in the laboratory, Joliot was awarded a Rothschild grant and took his science degree. He decided to prepare a doctoral thesis on the electrochemistry of radioactive elements, which he defended in 1930. As his grant was not enough to live on, he gave classes in electrical measurements at the Charliat industrial electricity school.
His meeting with Irène, the “boss's” daughter

Irène and Marie Curie at the Radium Institute in 1921 ©ACJC

The first paper authored by Frédéric and Irène was on the number of ions produced by alpha rays of polonium and was published in 1928, in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. The two young researchers were married since October 4, 1926.

Irène Curie, the eldest daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, was born on 12 September 1897, in Paris. After two years of studies in the “teaching cooperative” that her mother and other university professors, like Paul Langevin, Jean Perrin and M. Mouton, had created for their children, she prepared for the baccalaureate at the Collège Sévigné. During the First World War she studied for a degree in the physical sciences, while tending to the wounded as a radiology nurse, alongside her mother. This work, conducted without protection against X-rays, contributed to the progressive deterioration of her health in later years.

Irène and Marie Curie at the Radium Institute ©ACJC

From 1919, Irène Curie assisted her mother at the Radium Institute. She designed a gold leaf electroscope to measure the radioactivity in fertilizer. Then she focused on basic research and prepared a thesis on the alpha rays of polonium, which she defended in 1925. Soon after her thesis defense, she started working with Frédéric Joliot.

Gold leaf electroscope designed by Irène Curie, exhibited at the Curie Museum. ©Institut Curie - Musée Curie

Irène was a shy and artless young woman, imperturbably calm and of great simplicity, seemingly distant in manner. Her intelligence and sensibility appealed to the young physicist whose seductive qualities were legion: intelligent, warm, brilliant, chatty. They shared an interest in sport - swimming, tennis, skiing - but also their passion for scientific research. They were complementary: one made relatively few friends, the other was gifted in making contacts; one seemed calm and serene, the other enthusiastic and impulsive.

Irène Curie in the Marie Curie Laboratory at the Radium Institute ©ACJC

On 4 October 1926, Irène married Frédéric Joliot “(...) the most brilliant, the most spirited of the workers at the Radium Institute. For ten years now this thoughtful academic young woman and this fiery young scientist, full of vitality and noble ideas, have enjoyed a most happy married life (...). In the company of her husband, whose side she rarely leaves since they work together on their research scientific, Irène Joliot-Curie has become more human and relaxed.” (Eve Curie, “Marianne” magazine, 1936)

They had two children, Hélène, born in 1927, and Pierre, in 1932.

Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie in their physics laboratory at the Radium Institute, 1932 ©ACJC

Several of their joint studies were done with that marvelous instrument the Wilson chamber, and Frédéric, who was particularly skillful with his hands, designed and developed a variable pressure model. Then started a particularly fruitful period in their collaboration. Using rich sources of polonium that they had prepared, they studied penetrating radiation, which led to Chadwick's discovery of the neutron.The discovery of artificial radioactivity

Ceremony at the Radium Institute for the award of the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to the Joliots ©ACJC

On 15 January 1934, the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences published Frédéric and Irène's discovery of artificial radioactivity. The adjective “artificial” did not please the Joliots who always made a point of saying that the radioactivity they had obtained was identical to natural radioactivity and that only the production of radioactive isotopes was artificial.

A little over one year after the death of Marie Curie, the Joliots were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in December 1935, the year that James Chadwick won the physics prize for his synthesis of new radioactive elements.

In 1936, Irène agreed to create the position of under-secretary of state for scientific research in Léon Blum's Front Populaire government, but only wished to occupy the post for a few months before handing over to Jean Perrin.

Frédéric was appointed professor at the Collège de France in 1937. His appointment came with a laboratory and special funds for the building of one of Europe's first cyclotrons. He set up the atomic synthesis laboratory at Ivry in order to promote the construction of particle accelerators in France.

Irène Curie in the chemistry laboratory of the Radium Institute around 1950. ©ACJC

Irène was appointed professor at the Paris Faculty of Sciences in 1937. She continued her research at the Curie Laboratory, then headed by André Debierne, a former collaborator of Marie Curie, who had discovered actinium. With Pavlé Savitch, she strove to solve the enigma of the transuranic elements.

In January 1939, following the discovery of fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, Frédéric Joliot imagined, with rare quick wittedness, an experiment that would provide physical proof of the rupture of uranium nuclei.

With his collaborators Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski and later Francis Perrin (the son of Jean Perrin), Frédéric demonstrated the possibility of producing a divergent chain reaction likely to release harnessable energy. Their atomic research was disrupted by the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, and on 30 October 1939, together with Halban and Kowarski, Frédéric Joliot entrusted the Academy of Sciences with a sealed envelope containing patents. The envelope was unsealed almost ten years later, in 1948.


The “battle for heavy water”

On the suggestion of Frédéric Joliot, then an artillery captain, Raoul Dautry the Minister of Munitions sent a mission to Norway to buy the world's supply of heavy water (185 kg), a few weeks before the Germans overran France. Henri Moureu transported the precious cans to Clermont-Ferrand the capital of Auvergne, to the strong room of the Banque de France, where they were recorded under the name of product Z. The Joliots went to Clermont-Ferrand to set up a laboratory, but the German army was advancing into the heart of France, and the product had to be evacuated to Riom, where it was kept in the central prison, in the cell for dangerous criminals. It remained there but a short while. The enemy was drawing near. On June 18, at Frédéric Joliot's request, Halban and Kowarski boarded the collier “Broompark” with the heavy water and sailed for England. Joliot decided to remain in France. Halban and Kowarski continued their research first in England and then in Canada.

The Collège de France laboratory was taken over by the Germans. Fortunately, the German physicist W. Gentner, who had already worked with the Joliots at the Radium Institute, offered to run the laboratory, with the secret agreement of Frédéric Joliot, and succeeded in protecting it.

A militant

Frédéric Joliot joined the socialist party SFIO in 1934. He joined the French Resistance very early. In 1941, he became president of the National Front for the Liberation of France. During the Occupation, he was a member of the French Communist Party.

False papers used by Frédéric Joliot in 1944 as a member of the Resistance. ©ACJC

Irène was suffering from tuberculosis and often stayed in sanatoria in the Alps. In June 1944, she crossed the border into Switzerland with her children Hélène and Pierre, while Frédéric, who was on the run from the Gestapo, went into hiding under the name of Jean-Pierre Caumont.

Before, in 1943, Frédéric Joliot was elected member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Medicine. At the Collège de France he took part in biophysics studies utilizing radioactive markers.

On the liberation of Paris, Frédéric Joliot reorganized and ran the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Scientific Committee of the CEA in 1946 Seated, left to right: Pierre Auger, Irène Joliot-Curie, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Francis Perrin, Lew Kowarski; standing: Bertrand Goldschmidt, Pierre Biquard, Léon Deniwelle, Jean Langevin. ©ACJC

General de Gaulle created the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) at the suggestion of Frédéric Joliot, who naturally became its first high commissioner, with Raoul Dautry appointed as general administrator. The first atomic energy committee of the CEA was composed of the president of the provisional government, Frédéric Joliot, Raoul Dautry, General Dassault, Irène Joliot-Curie, Pierre Auger and Francis Perrin.

The CEA scientific committee's plan was three-pronged: first, the construction of a natural uranium and heavy water reactor; second, the building of two other medium-power reactors and of a large center for nuclear studies; third, the construction at a later date of a large nuclear power plant for energy production.The first nuclear reactor

Inauguration of the ZOE nuclear reactor on 15 December 1948 ©ACJC

At twelve minutes pass noon on 15 December 1948 at the Châtillon fort, the ZOE reactor (name proposed by Kowarski: Z for zero, the power of the reactor being very low, O for uranium oxide, and E for eau lourde - heavy water) went critical.

This was a great success for France, after so many years without nuclear research.

Cover of the journal Atomes ©ACJC

The second stage was successfully concluded with the construction of a large center for nuclear studies: a second reactor was built at Saclay near Paris, as were two particle accelerators.

On the creation in 1949 of the World Peace Council, Frédéric Joliot became its president. Deeply marked by the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, he launched the “Stockholm Appeal” in March 1950 for a ban on nuclear weapons, which was signed by millions of people.

Cover of the magazine Combat pour la Paix , portrait of Frédéric Joliot by Picasso ©ACJC

Joliot celebrated his 50 th birthday on 19 March 1950. On 29 April, he was dismissed for political reasons at the height of the Cold War, because of his clash with Georges Bidault's government on the utilization of atomic energy. Francis Perrin succeeded him.

Irène, who had succeeded André Debierne at the head of the Radium Institute's Curie Laboratory in 1946, left the CEA soon afterwards.

Irène Curie in the director's office at the Radium Institute in 1949 ©ACJC

This new situation affected the wherewithal available for laboratory work at the Collège de France and the Radium Institute.

But in 1955 Irène Joliot secured the creation of a modern new laboratory at Orsay, which was to be equipped with a synchrocyclotron.

Irène died on 17 March 1956, at the Curie Hospital, of subacute leukemia brought on by her work.
Irène's death deeply affected Frédéric Joliot, who had himself been in poor health for some years. In his house at Sceaux, he had set up a small workshop where he had begun to paint. On the death of Irène, Frédéric succeeded her as director of the Curie Laboratory.

Frédéric Joliot taking photographs of the IPN building site at Orsay, 1957. ©ACJC

He devoted the last two years of his life to setting up the new nuclear physics laboratory at Orsay, not far from Saclay, where the Collège de France cyclotron was transferred. He was present for the start up of the 156 MeV synchrocyclotron, but did not live to see its beam extraction, and died on 14 August 1958.

A state funeral was held, as it had been for Irène two years before. Frédéric Joliot was buried beside his wife in the Sceaux cemetery.