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Antoine Henri Becquerel (/ ˌ b ɛ k ə ˈ r ɛ l /; [3] French: [ɑ̃ʁi bɛkʁɛl]; 15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French physicist who shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie for his discovery of radioactivity. [4] The SI unit of radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him.
Marie Curie's birthplace, 16 Freta Street, Warsaw, Poland. Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie [a] (Polish: [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska kʲiˈri] ⓘ; née Skłodowska; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie (/ ˈ k j ʊər i / KURE-ee; [1] French: [maʁi kyʁi]), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on ...
Until then, atoms were assumed to be the indestructible basis of all matter; and although Curie had suggested that radioactivity was an atomic phenomenon, the idea of the atoms of radioactive substances breaking up was a radically new idea.
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is considered radioactive .
Otto Hahn (German: [ˈɔtoː ˈhaːn] ⓘ; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry.He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.
The same year, Rutherford's doctoral student James Chadwick discovered the neutron. [3] Experiments bombarding materials with neutrons led Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie to discover induced radioactivity in 1934, which allowed the creation of radium-like elements. [4]
When radioactivity was first discovered, no one was sure what the cause was. It needed careful work by Soddy and Rutherford to prove that atomic transmutation was in fact occurring. [10] In 1903, with Sir William Ramsay at University College London, Soddy showed that the decay of radium produced helium gas. [2]
They noted that radioactivity continued after the neutron emissions ceased. Not only had they discovered a new form of radioactive decay in the form of positron emission, they had transmuted an element into a hitherto unknown radioactive isotope of another, thereby inducing radioactivity where there had been none before. Radiochemistry was now ...