CURIE, IRÈNE et M.F. JOLIOT. - ANNOUNCING THE DISCOVERY OF ARTIFICIAL RADIOACTIVITY - NOBEL PRIZE PAPER OF 1935.

Un nouveau type de radioactivité. (Séance du 15 Janvier 1934).

Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1934. 4to. No wrappers. In: "Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences", Tome 198 No 3. Titlepage to vol. 198. Pp. (213-) 292. (Entire issue offered). The joint paper: pp. 254-256 a. 1 photographic illustration in the text. Titlepage with a stamp on verso, 2 small tears and a tiny bit of upper right corner gone. Titlepage a bit browned.

First appearance of this seminal paper in which artificial radioactivity was announced for the first time. Curie and Joliot were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1935 "in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements".

"Until this date (1934), atomic nuclei emitting radiation were found in nature: it was called the natural radioactivity. It had been known since Rutherford that this natural radioactivity changed a nucleus into an other one: for instance radium becomes finally lead after many radioactive decays. We could say that lead does not become gold but gold becomes lead! But... this change of matter was not under control. It was not possible to construct the desired chemical element as the alchemist dreamed... But Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, made the dream become almost reality."

"Another very important development in the early 1934 by the Joliot-Curies in connection with irradiation of aluminum by alpha particles. The two French scientists detected the production of the recently discovered positrons. [...] However, they soon realized that the positron activity continued after the alpha source was removed and that they had, in fact, discovered positive beta radioactivity. The importance of the discovery of artificial radioactivity was immediately recognized and resulted in a Nobel Prize in chemistry to the Joliot-Curies in 1935. The new phenomenon immediately became widely employed in nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine." (Kragh, Quantum Generations, p. 187)

"These elegant experiments, which provided the first chemical proof of induced transmutations and showed the possibility of artificially creating radioisotopes of known stable elements, were repeated and extended in the major nuclear physics laboratories of various countries " (DSB).

Born on 12 September 1897 in Paris, Irène Curie was the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. "During World War I, she worked as a nurse, helping her mother operate radiography equipment, and then studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne, gaining a doctorate for studying the range of alpha particles. She then went to work for her mother at the Radium Institute. There she met Frédéric Joliot whom she married in 1926. Frédéric Joliot was born on 19 March 1900 in Paris - He joined the Radium Institute in 1925 and obtained his PhD in 1930. Together the Joliot-Curies worked on radioactivity and the transmutation of the elements. Twice they just missed major discoveries: in 1932 when Chadwick beat them to the neutron, and in 1933 when Anderson discovered the positron. However, in 1934, whilst bombarding light elements with alpha particles, the Joliot-Curies noticed that, although proton production stopped when the alpha particle bombardment stopped, another form of radiation continued. The alpha particles had produced an isotope of phosphorus not found in nature. This isotope was radioactive and was decaying through beta-decay" (DSB).

Order-nr.: 47071