Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956)
The daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, and the wife of Frédéric Joliot, Irène Joliot-Curie is above all a highly talented researcher and a politically engaged woman.
Irène Joliot-Curie appears early on at her mother’s side, first with the petites Curies, those vehicles designed to make X-rays of the wounded during the First World War, then as a laboratory assistant and later as her mother’s research assistant in the Curie Laboratory.
During the 1933 Solvay Conference on Physics, which was also attended by Marie Curie, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie present the results of their more recent experiments, which leave their colleagues more than doubtful. But some months later, the couple solves the mystery, realizing that they have produced artificial radioelements. This discovery earns them the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Irène Joliot-Curie takes part in the 1948 Conference on Physics as a member of the audience.
Irène Joliot-Curie fought for gender equality, and she was briefly appointed Undersecretary of State, although women were not yet entitled to vote in France. And yet the doors of the French Academy of Sciences remained closed to her … She was also an antifascist militant and a staunch pacifist.