19 March 1900, Paris (France) - 14 August 1958, Paris (France).
He studied at the Lycée Lakanal, where he excelled in sports rather than academics. Setbacks in the family finances forced him to attend the Lavoisier free public school to prepare for entry to the Paris School of Physics and Industrial Chemistry where, in 1923, he graduated as an engineer with the highest marks in his class.
After his military service, he accepted a research scholarship and, on the recommendation of Paul Langevin, accepted a contract as an assistant at Marie Curie's Radium Institute in 1925. Iréne Curie, daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, winners of the Noble Prize for Physics in 1903, taught him how to work with radioactivity. A year later, Irène and Frédéric married in a civil ceremony, adopting the surname Joliot-Curie.
At the same time, he continued to study for a degree in science and worked as a teacher at the Charliat School of Industrial Electricity, to improve his financial situation. He graduated in science in 1927 and obtained his doctorate in 1930 with a thesis on the electrochemical study of radioelements. From 1928 onwards, he co-signed all scientific papers with his wife.
In 1927, their daughter Hélène was born, and, in 1932, their son Pierre, both of whom continued the family saga of scientists and became nuclear physicist and biochemist, and researcher, respectively.
In 1934, the couple published a report showing the preparation of artificial radioisotopes by bombarding light atoms (boron, aluminium, and magnesium). They observed that in the bombardment process, the atom absorbed an alpha particle while producing protons neutrons, and even positrons (the antiparticle of the electron). In this way, they obtained radioactive isotopes of elements that were not radioactive and revealed the possibility of applying their discoveries to achieve chemical changes in physiological processes. Their assumptions were later verified when the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland was detected.
The Joliot-Curie experiments showed that the elements used as targets continued to emit positrons after the end of the bombardment, i.e. they behaved like a radioactive substance. Eventually, it became clear that any element with one or more stable types of nuclei could also have radioactive nuclei, now known as radioisotopes.
The discovery of the neutron in 1932 by Sir James Chadwick and of the positron by Carl D. Anderson were also the result of research carried out by the couple. Enrico Fermi's method using neutron bombardment, which led to the fission of uranium, is an extension of the Joliot-Curie procedure in which alpha particles were used to obtain artificial radioisotopes.
In 1935, Iréne and Frédéric were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the synthesis of new radioactive elements.
In 1937, as a member of the French Academy of Sciences, he was appointed professor at the Collège de France, a post he held until 1956, when, after his wife's death, he took over her chair in physics at the Sorbonne in Paris. He also prepared new radiation sources and supervised the construction of the Arcueil-Cachan and Ivry accelerators and the cyclotron at the Collège de France (the second in Europe after the Soviet Union).
In 1940, the Joliot-Curie couple was awarded the Bernard Medal by Columbia University.
During the Nazi invasion of France, Frédéric, as an active member of the French Communist Party, took an active part in the French Resistance. At the end of World War II, he was appointed director of the Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS), becoming, in 1945, the first High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. In this position, he directed the construction of the first French atomic pile in 1948.
In 1947 he was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society ‘for distinguished contributions to nuclear fission, particularly the discovery of artificial radioactivity and neutron emission in the fission process’.
In 1955, he was one of eleven intellectuals who signed the Russell-Einstein manifesto calling for peaceful solutions to international conflicts at the height of the Cold War.
In his honour, there is a crater on the moon named Joliot.
