Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956), with husband Frédéric, studied artificial radioactivity and contributed to the discovery of the neutron. They won a Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Irène Joliot-Curie, elder daughter of famed scientists Marie and Pierre Curie, won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935 for the discovery, with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie, of artificial radioactivity . She began her scientific career as a research assistant at the Radium Institute in Paris, an institute founded by her parents, and soon succeeded her mother as its research director. It was at the Institute where she met her husband and lifelong collaborator, Frédéric Joliot. They usually published their findings under the combined form of their last names, Joliot-Curie.

Born on September 12, 1897, in Paris to Nobel laureates Marie and Pierre Curie, Irène Curie had a rather extraordinary...