ANTOINE

See also:

• HENRI

HENRI

See also:

• BECQUEREL

BECQUEREL (1852-1908)  , son of the last-named, who succeeded to his chair at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in 1892, was born in Paris on the 15th of December 1852, studied at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he was appointed a professor in 1895, and in 1875 entered the department des ponts et chaussees, of which in 1894 he became ingenieur en chef . He was distinguished as the discoverer of radioactivity, having found in 1896 that uranium at ordinary temperatures emits an invisible radiation which in many respects resembles Rontgen rays, and can affect a photographic plate after passing through thin plates of metal . For his researches in this department he was in 1903 awarded a Nobel prize jointly with Pierre Curie . He also engaged in work on magnetism, the polarization of light, phosphorescence and the absorption of light in crystals . He died at Croisic in Brittany on the 25th of August 1908 .