Abstract
MME. JOLIOT-CURIE has been appointed Secretary of State for Scientific Research in the new Government just formed in France by M. Blum. Her name will be familiar to scientific readers as that of the daughter of Prof, and Mme. Curie, discoverers of radium, and herself a distinguished worker in the field of artificial radioactivity. M. and Mme. Joliot-Curie have carried out important investigations in various branches of radioactivity which were fittingly crowned by the award to them in 1935 of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. When the discovery was announced of the positive electron, M. and Mme. Joliot-Curie took up the examination of methods by which it could be produced, and found that positive electrons appeared with neutrons during the disintegration of certain light elements by a-rays. It appeared on further investigation that whereas the neutrons were emitted during the a-particle bombardment, the positive electrons were due to an entirely separate process, and continued to appear after the bombardment had ceased. The new process thus recognised was then shown to be due to the presence of unstable isotopes with radioactive properties, a discovery which was immediately found to be of wide importance. The preparation and examination of these radioactive bodies of short life period, by investigators in numerous laboratories, have afforded valuable additions to our knowledge of atomic structure and the mechanism of atomic disintegration.
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Mme. Joliot-Curie and Scientific Research in France. Nature 137, 976 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137976a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137976a0