Henri Becquerel
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Antoine Henri Becquerel | |
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Antoine Becquerel, French physicist | |
Born | |
Died | August 25, 1908 Le Croisic, Brittany, France |
Residence | France |
Nationality | French |
Field | Physicist |
Institutions | Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers École Polytechnique Paris Museum |
Alma mater | École Polytechnique École des Ponts et Chaussées |
Known for | Radioactivity |
Notable prizes | Nobel Prize for Physics (1903) |
Note that he is the father of Jean Becquerel, the son of A. E. Becquerel, and the grandson of
Antoine César Becquerel. |
Antoine Henri Becquerel (December 15, 1852 – August 25, 1908) was a French physicist, Nobel laureate, and one of the discoverers of radioactivity.
Early days and family
Becquerel was born in Paris into a family that, including him and his son, produced four generations of scientists. His grandfather, Antoine Cesar Becquerel, invented a method of extracting metals from ores using electrolysis. His father, Alexander Edmond Becquerel, was a physicist who researched solar phenomena and phosphorescence. Henri became well known for his development of laws of radiation of light from phosphorescent substances and more famously for his discovery of the radioactivity of uranium. Henri Becquerel shared a Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie for their combined contribution to the understanding of radioactivity.
Henri Becquerel was known as a young man of high moral standards. He studied science at the École Polytechnique and engineering at the École des Ponts et Chaussées. He published his first work at the age of 22 and continued to produce writings on science throughout his life.
- Spouse: Louise Désirée Lorieux (m. 1890)
- Children: Jean
Rise in natural sciences, discoveries and major works
Antoine Henri graduated from the Ecole Poytechnique in 1874 and worked as a civil engineer while maintaining an interest in problems of a scientific and theoretical nature. He accepeted a postition in physicas at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in 1878. Within ten years he had earned his doctorate with a dissertation on the absorption of light by crystals.
In 1892, he became the third in his family to occupy the physics chair at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1894 he became chief engineer in the Department of Bridges and Highways.
In 1896, while investigating phosphorescence in uranium salts, Becquerel discovered radioactivity accidentally. Investigating the work of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Becquerel wrapped a fluorescent mineral, potassium uranyl sulfate, in photographic plates and black material in preparation for an experiment requiring bright sunlight. However, prior to actually performing the experiment, Becquerel found that the photographic plates were fully exposed. This discovery led Becquerel to investigate the spontaneous emission of nuclear radiation.
Describing his method to the French Academy of Sciences on January 24, 1896, he said,
One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative. … One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduces silver salts.[1][2]
In 1903 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity."
In 1908, Becquerel was elected permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences. He died the same year, at the age of 55, in Le Croisic.
Honors
The SI unit for radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him, and there are Becquerel craters on the Moon and Mars.
- Rumford Medal (1900)
- Helmholtz Medal (1901)
- Nobel Prize for Physics (1903)
- Barnard Medal (1905)
See also
Notes
- ↑ Henri Becquerel (1896). Sur les radiations émises par phosphorescence. Comptes Rendus 122: 420-421.
- ↑ Comptes Rendus 122, 420 (1896), translated by Carmen Giunta. Accessed September 10, 2006.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
<<We need at least 3 reliable references here, properly formatted.>>
Jones, Bessie Zaban, ed.The Golden Age of Science, Thirty Portraits of the Giants of 19th - Century Science by Their Scientific Contemporaries; Simon and Schuster, New York with the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1966 Article entitled: Antoine Henri Becquerel, by Andre Broca - from Revue general des sciences pures et appliquees
External links
- Henri Becquerel - Biography
- Becquerel short biography and the use of his name as an unit of measure in the SI
- Annotated bibliography for Henri Becquerel from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
|
Persondata | |
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NAME | Becquerel, Antoine Henri |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
SHORT DESCRIPTION | French physicist |
DATE OF BIRTH | December 15, 1852 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris, France |
DATE OF DEATH | August 25, 1908 |
PLACE OF DEATH | Le Croisic, Brittany, France |
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