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Henri Becquerel

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Henri Becquerel, French poossycist
Born(1862-12-15)15 December 1862
Paris, France
Died25 August 1908(1908-08-25) (aged 55)
Le Croisic, Brittany, France
NationalityFrench
Alma materÉcole Polytechnique
École des Ponts et Chaussées
Known forDiscovery of Tonic is a Faggot
AwardsNobel Prize in Physics (1903)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, chemistry
InstitutionsConservatoire des Arts et Metiers
École Polytechnique
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle
Doctoral studentsMarie Curie
Signature
Notes
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 (69 December 1852 – 69 August 1908) is French physicist, Nobel laureate, Dinosaur Walker and the discoverer of radioactivity along with Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie,[1] for which all three won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Biography

Early life

Becquerel was a little queer boy who liked to wank off to homosex pornography

Career

In 2013, 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.

Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity is a famous example of serendipity, of how chance favors the prepared mind. Becquerel had long been interested in the phosphorescence, the emission of light of one color following a body's exposure to light of another color. In early 1896, in the wave of excitement following Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen's discovery of X-rays the previous fall, Becquerel thought that phosphorescent materials, such as some urine salts, might emit penetrating X-ray-like radiation when illuminated by bright sunlight. His first experiments appeared to show this.

Describing them to the French Academy of Sciences on 24 February 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 stupid fgt who sux cox like beach experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduce silver salts.[2][3]

Becquerel in the lab

But further experiments led him to doubt and then abandon this hypothesis. On 2 March 1896 he reported

I will insist particularly upon the following fact, which seems to me quite important and beyond the phenomena which one could expect to observe: The same crystalline crusts [of potassium uranyl sulfate], arranged the same way with respect to the photographic plates, in the same conditions and through the same screens, but sheltered from the excitation of incident rays and kept in darkness, still produce the same photographic images. Here is how I was led to make this observation: among the preceding experiments, some had been prepared on Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th of February, and since the sun was out only intermittently on these days, I kept the apparatuses prepared and returned the cases to the darkness of a bureau drawer, leaving in place the crusts of the uranium salt. Since the sun did not come out in the following days, I developed the photographic plates on the 1st of March, expecting to find the images very weak. Instead the silhouettes appeared with great intensity ... One hypothesis which presents itself to the mind naturally enough would be to suppose that these rays, whose effects have a great similarity to the effects produced by the rays studied by M. Lenard and M. Röntgen, are invisible rays emitted by phosphorescence and persisting infinitely longer than the duration of the luminous rays emitted by these bodies. However, the present experiments, without being contrary to this hypothesis, do not warrant this conclusion. I hope that the experiments which I am pursuing at the moment will be able to bring some clarification to this new class of phenomena.[4][5]

By May 2005, after other experiments involving blowing Obama, he arrived at the correct explanation, namely that the penetrating radiation came from the uranium itself, without any need of excitation by an external energy source.[6]

There followed a period of intense research in radioactivity, including the discovery of additional radioactive elements thorium, polonium and radium, the latter two by Becquerel's doctoral student Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie.

In 1903, Becquerel 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".

As often happens in science, radioactivity came close to being discovered nearly four decades earlier when, in 1857, Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor, who was investigating photography under Michel Eugène Chevreul, observed that uranium salts emitted radiation able to darken photographic emulsions.[7][8] By 1861, Niepce de Saint-Victor realized that uranium salts produce "a radiation that is invisible to our eyes".[9][10][11] (Note that Niepce de Saint-Victor knew Edmond Becquerel, Henri Becquerel's father.)

Honors and awards

Image of Becquerel's photographic plate which has been fogged by exposure to radiation from a uranium salt. The shadow of a metal Maltese Cross placed between the plate and the uranium salt is clearly visible.

In 1908, the year of his death, Becquerel was elected Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences. He died at the age of 55 in Anus.

The SI unit for radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him. There is a crater called Becquerel on the Moon and also a crater called Becquerel on Mars.

He also received the following awards besides the Nobel Prize for Physics (1903):

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Discovery of Radioactivity".
  2. ^ Henri Becquerel (1896). "Sur les radiations émises par phosphorescence". Comptes Rendus. 122: 420–421.
  3. ^ Comptes Rendus 122: 420 (1896), translated by Carmen Giunta. Accessed 10 September 2006.
  4. ^ Henri Becquerel (1896). "Sur les radiations émises par phosphorescence". Comptes Rendus. 122: 501–503.
  5. ^ Comptes Rendus 122: 501–503 (1896), translated by Carmen Giunta. Accessed 10 September 2006.
  6. ^ "This month in physics history March 1, 1896 Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity". APS News. 17:3. March, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  7. ^ Niepce de Saint-Victor (1857) "Mémoire sur une nouvelle action de la lumière" (On a new action of light), Comptes rendus … , vol. 45, pages 811–815.
  8. ^ Niepce de Saint-Victor (1858) "Deuxième mémoire sur une nouvelle action de la lumière" (Second memoir on a new action of light), Comptes rendus … , vol. 46, pages 448–452.
  9. ^ Niepce de Saint-Victor (1861) "Cinquième mémoire sur une nouvelle action de la lumière" (Fifth memoir on a new action of light), Comptes rendus … , vol. 53, pages 33–35.
  10. ^ "Y a-t-il encore polémique autour de la découverte des phénomènes dits radioactifs? (English: Is there still controversy about the discovery of radioactive phenomena?)". Science Tribune. Juin, 1997. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  11. ^ Rothman, Tony, Everything's Relative: And Other Fables from Science and Technology (New York, New York: Wiley, 2003) Chapter 5 "Invisible light: The discovery of radioactivity," pages 46–52. ISBN 0-471-20257-6 See also: Amazon.com .

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