Hélène Langevin-Joliot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Hélène Langevin-Joliot
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Langevin-Joliot in 2012
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Hélène Joliot-Curie
19 September 1927 Paris, France
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| Spouse(s) | Michel Langevin |
| Children | Yves Langevin, Françoise Langevin-Mijangos |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | CNRS |
| Thesis | Contribution à l'étude des phénomènes de freinage interne et d'autoionisation associés à la désintégration β. (1956) |
Hélène Langevin-Joliot (born Hélène Joliot-Curie on 19 September 1927) is a French nuclear physicist. She is famous for her work on nuclear reactions in French science labs.
Hélène comes from a very famous family of scientists. Her grandparents were Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. Her parents were Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. All four of them won Nobel Prizes for their amazing discoveries in physics and chemistry.
After she retired from her research career, Hélène started working to help others. She encourages young women and girls to study STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). She also works to help everyone understand science better.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Hélène Langevin-Joliot was born in Paris, France, on September 19, 1927. She loved science from a young age. Her parents, Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. This likely inspired her even more.
As a child, Hélène was very good at math. Her parents encouraged her to study physics. She went to the École nationale de chimie physique et biologie de Paris for her studies. She did very well there.
Later, she studied at the IN2P3 (Institute of Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics) in Orsay. Her parents had helped set up this lab. After getting her first degree, she started working on her doctorate in nuclear physics. She studied how particles behave during certain reactions. She earned her doctorate from the Collège de France.
Her Career in Science
After finishing her doctorate, Langevin-Joliot began working for the CNRS in 1949. She focused mainly on nuclear reactions. She became the director of research at CNRS in 1969. She continued her research there until she retired in 1992.
When she retired, she was given the special title of Director of Research Emeritus. This honored her important work at CNRS. During her career, she also worked at the Laboratory of Chemistry and Nuclear Physics. She was there from 1949 to 1957.
Later, she worked on nuclear reactions for the Institut national de physique nucléaire et de physique des particules. She left that organization in 2008. Towards the end of her career, she advised the French government. She was part of a group that looked at scientific and technological options. She also helped with the celebration of the discovery of radioactivity.
Today, she is a professor of nuclear physics at the Institute of Nuclear Physics at the University of Paris. She is also a director of research at the CNRS. She is well-known for encouraging women to work in science. She leads the group that gives out the Marie Curie Excellence award. This award goes to excellent European researchers. From 2004 to 2012, she was president of the French Rationalist Union. In this role, she gave talks and wrote articles about science and technology.
Activism and Advocacy
Hélène Langevin-Joliot is known for helping women join STEM fields. She shares stories about her mother and grandmother to inspire others. She is happy that more women are entering science. She hopes her family's story will encourage more girls to follow their science dreams.
She also works to improve science literacy for everyone. She gives interviews and talks about her own career and her family's work. She has written a lot about her family's contributions to physics and science. She wants people to understand that her grandmother, Marie Curie, did not "sacrifice" her life for science.
Through her work with the Association for Scientific Culture and the Promotion of Reason and Science, she supports the peaceful use of nuclear energy. She writes about this in their magazine, Raison Présente.
Her Famous Family
Langevin-Joliot comes from a family full of famous scientists.
- Her grandparents on her mother's side were Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. They are famous for studying radioactivity. They won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 with Henri Becquerel. Marie Curie was the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. She won her second Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1911. This was for finding the elements radium and polonium.
- Her parents were Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie. Marie Curie actually helped mentor Frédéric. Her parents won a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935. They discovered something called Induced radioactivity.
- Her brother, Pierre Joliot, is also a noted scientist. He is a biophysicist and has studied photosynthesis.
Because of her family's history, Langevin-Joliot often gives interviews and talks about them. She even wrote the introduction to a book called Radiation and Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie's Dream. This introduction included a short history of the Curies.
Her husband, Michel Langevin, was also a nuclear physicist. He was the grandson of another famous physicist, Paul Langevin. Hélène's son, Yves (born in 1951), is an astrophysicist.
Selected Works
Academic Papers
- "Sur un rayonnement γ de 121 keV obseryé dans une source de 147Pm de très grande pureté". Journal de Physique et le Radium 17, no. 6 (1956): 497-498.
- "Contribution à l’étude des phénomènes de freinage interne et d’autoionisation associés à la désintégration β". Annales de Physique. Vol. 13. No. 2. 1957.
- "Marie Curie and Her Time". Chemistry International 33.1 (2011): 4.
Books and Literary Works
- "Radiation And Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie's Dream". 2004.
- "Marie Curie et ses filles. Lettres". 2011.
- "L'épopée de l'énergie nucléaire: Une histoire scientifique et industrielle". 2013.
- "Science et culture: Repères pour une culture scientifique commune". 2020.
- "Marie Curie, ma mère". 2022.
Articles
- "Progrès scientifique et progrès : pour sortir de la confusion", Raison présente, vol. 194, no. 2, 2015, pp. 19-29.
