Henri Becquerel
Henri Becquerel, a French physicist, was born in Paris on December 15, 1852. His grandfather, Antoine-Cesar Becquerel, had fought at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 and later earned a considerable reputation as a physicist. He made important contributions to the study of electrochemistry, meteorology, and agriculture. Henri father, Alexander-Edmond Becquerel, also made a name for himself in science. His research-included studies on photography, heat, and the conductivity of hot gases, and luminescence. Becquerel's early education took place at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand from which he graduated in 1872. He then enrolled at the Ecole Polytechnique, and two years later he moved on to the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (Bridges and Highways School). In 1875 he started teaching at the Polytechnique and later he succeeded his father Alexander -Edmond Becquerel in the Chair of Physics at the Natural History Museum. He was an expert in fluorescence and phosphorescence, continuing the work of his father and his grandfather.1 The period of quiescence in Becquerel's research career came to an end in 1895 with the announcement of Rontgen's discovery of X-rays. The aspect of the discovery that caught Becquerel's
Among his other honors and awards were the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1900, the Helmholtz Medal of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1905. Some of Becquerel works include Recherches sur la phosphorescence (Research on Phosphorescence, 1882-1897) and Decouverte des radiations invisibles emises par l'uranium (Discovery of the Invisible Radiation Emitted by Uranium, 1896-1897). 9 On February 24, 1986, he reported to the Academy that fluorescent crystals of potassium uranyl sulfate had exposed a photographic plated wrapped in black paper while they both lay for several hours in direct sunlight. On March 2, Bacquerel reported comparable exposures when both crystals and plate lay in total darkness. In December 31, 1906, Becquerel was elected vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, serving in that capacity during 1907 and succeeding to the presidency in 1908. In June 1908 he was elected as one of two permanent secretaries of the Academy. In 1903 Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in physics with the French physicist Pierre Curie and Marie Curie for their work on radioactivity. Dictionary of Scientific Biography: Volume I, Charles Scribner's Sons. Becquerel's own research continued to produce useful results. In May of 1896 Becquerel found uranium metal to be many times more radioactive than the compounds of uranium he had been using and began to use it as a source of radioactivity. Becquerel demonstrated that the radiation emitted in uranium shared certain characteristics with X-rays but unlike X-rays could be deflected by a magnetic field and therefore must consist of charged particles.4 Notable Twentieth-Century Scientist: Volume I A-E, Gale Research Inc.
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