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Born on this day
Mario J. Molina
Mario José Molina-Pasquel Henríquez (born March 19, 1943 in Mexico City) is a Mexican chemist and one of the most prominent precursors to the discovering of the Antarctic ozone hole.
12th week in year
19 March 2024

Important personalitiesBack

Frédéric Joliot-Curie19.3.1900

Wikipedia (11 Mar 2013, 11:06)
Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie (19 March 1900 – 14 August 1958), born Jean Frédéric Joliot, was a French physicist, husband of Irène Joliot-Curie and Nobel laureate.


Career

While 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, or recoil, of nuclei that had been struck by other particles, which was an essential step in the discovery of the neutron by Chadwick in 1932. In 1935 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of "artificial radioactivity," resulting from the creation of short-lived radioisotopes from the bombardment of stable nuclides such as boron, magnesium, and aluminum with alpha particles.

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-Curie 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, however, largely stalled Joliot's research, as did his subsequent post-war administrative duties.

At the time of the Nazi invasion in 1940, Joliot-Curie managed to smuggle his working documents and materials to England with Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski. During the French occupation he took an active part in the French Resistance as a member of the National Front. Collins and LaPierre in their book Is Paris Burning? note that during the Paris uprising in August 1944 he served in the Prefecture of Police manufacturing for his fellow insurgents Molotov cocktails, the Resistance's principal weapon against German tanks. The Prefecture was the scene of some of the most intense fighting during the uprising.


   
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