Radiographic service and scientific training
During the First World War Irène worked with her mother in X-ray medical services. She resumed university studies afterwards and received her doctorate in 1925 for research on polonium’s alpha rays. At the Radium Institute she studied natural and artificial radioactivity. She married Frédéric Joliot in 1926.
Artificial radioactivity
In 1934 the couple found that aluminium bombarded with alpha particles continued emitting radiation after the source was removed. A radioactive phosphorus isotope had been produced. The new material decayed on its own rather than giving a signal only during irradiation. The work earned the 1935 chemistry prize.
Institutions and public service
She served as undersecretary for scientific research in 1936, became a professor in Paris in 1937 and director of the Radium Institute in 1946. She helped develop atomic-energy institutions and the nuclear-physics centre at Orsay and supported women’s participation in scientific and public life. She died in Paris in 1956.
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