The Radium Institute
After graduating from the Paris school of industrial physics and chemistry, Joliot became Marie Curie’s assistant at the Radium Institute in 1925. He married Irène in 1926 and received a doctorate in 1930 for work on the electrochemistry of radioactive elements.
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Producing radioactive isotopes
In 1934 the Joliots bombarded materials with alpha particles and detected radioactivity that persisted after the source was removed. Aluminium, for example, produced a radioactive phosphorus isotope. Radioactive nuclei could therefore be created through nuclear reactions. They shared the 1935 chemistry prize for this work.
Laboratories and atomic-energy institutions
He became a professor at the Collège de France in 1937 and later studied chain reactions with Hans Halban, Lev Kowarski and others. He participated in the Resistance during the occupation. As postwar high commissioner for atomic energy he directed work on France’s first reactor in 1948. Removed from that office for political reasons in 1950, he continued laboratory and Orsay work.
References: [1]