Henri+Becquerel

Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. His father had done research on solar radiation and on phosphorescence. His father was one of his main inspirations to enter the field. Becquerels earliest work involved the plane polarization of light, and the absorption of light by crystals. Becquerel tried to discover a link between x-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence. He had inherited some uranium salts from his father, which phosphorescence upon exposure to light. When he place these salts near a photographic plate covered in opaque paper, the plate was discovered to be fogged. This function was found to be common to all the uranium salts that were studied, and was thereafter concluded to be an effect of the uranium atom. Becquerel had discovered spontaneous radioactivity. Unlike x-rays, the rays emitted by the uranium could be deflected by magnetic or electric fields. For his discovery he received the Nobel prize for physics in 1903 along with Marie and Pierre Curie.