Henri Becquerel Facts
Henri Becquerel Facts
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| Interesting Henri Becquerel Facts: |
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| Becquerel was born in Paris into a family which produced four generations of scientists including his grandfather (Antoine César Becquerel), father (Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel), and son (Jean Becquerel). |
| He studied engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des ponts et Chaussees. |
| In 1892 he was awarded the physics chair at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, becoming the third member of his family to do so. |
| His doctoral thesis was on the plane polarization of light and the phosphorescence and absorption of light by crystals. |
| 1896 Becquerel's was studying the effects of light on uranium salts which he discovered that uranium spontaneously emits a type of radiation unlike the X-rays discovered by Roentgen in November of 1895. |
| On February 24, 1896 he reported details of his experiment to the French Academy of Sciences outlining the use of photographic plates, a phosphorescent mineral and bright sunlight. |
| In late February he prepared his photographic plates as usual, but it was overcast so he put them in a drawer, planning to expose them to bright sunlight the next day. |
| When he opened the plates from the dark drawer, the images were exposed even more intensely and he concluded correctly that the penetrating rays came from the uranium itself. |
| Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor had reported that uranium salts darkened photographic plates in 1857 but he did not pursue the idea. |
| In 1903 Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre 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 Academie des Sciences. |
| He was awarded the Rumford Medal in 1900, the Helmholtz Medal in 1901, the Barnard Medal in 1905 and the Toffle Medal in 1908. |
| Craters on the Moon and Mars are named for him. |
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