Frédéric Joliot-Curie

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Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie né Joliot (March 19, 1900 – August 14, 1958) was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.

Born in Paris, France, he was a graduate of the School of Chemistry and Physics of the city of Paris. In 1925 he became an assistant to Marie Curie, at the Radium Institute. He fell in love with her daughter Irène Curie, and soon after their marriage in 1926 they both changed their surnames to Joliot-Curie. At the insistence of Marie, Joliot obtained a second baccalauréat, a bachelor's degree, and a doctorate in science, doing his thesis on the electrochemistry of radio-elements.

While being a lecturer at the Paris Faculty of Science, he collaborated with his wife on research on the structure of the atom, in particular on the projection of nuclei, which was an essential step in the discovery of the neutron. In 1935 they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

In 1937 he left the Radium Institute to become a professor at the Collège de France working on chain reactions and the requirements for the successful construction of a nuclear reactor that uses controlled nuclear fission to generate energy through the use of uranium and heavy water. Joliot was one of the scientists mentioned in Albert Einstein's letter to President Roosevelt as one of the leading scientists on the course to chain reactions. The Second World War would, however, largely stalled Joliot's research; as did his subsequent post-war administrative duties.

Stamp issued by DDR commemorating Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

At the time of the Nazi invasion in 1940, Joliot managed to smuggle his working documents and materials to England. During the French occupation he took an active part in the French Resistance. After the War, he served as Director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and became France's first High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. In 1948 he oversaw the construction of the first French atomic reactor. A devout Communist, he was relieved of his duties in 1950 for political reasons. He was one of the 11 signatories to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955. Although he retained his professorship at the Collège de France, on the death of his wife in 1956, he took over her position as Chair of Nuclear Physics at the Sorbonne.

Frédéric Joliot was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Medicine and named a Commander of the Legion of Honour, He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951 for his work as president of the World Council of Peace. He devoted the last years of his life to the creation of a centre for nuclear physics at Orsay, which is where his children, Hélène Langevin-Joliot and Pierre Joliot, were educated.

The Joliot crater on the Moon was named after him posthumously.