Frédéric Joliot-Curie

…the same year she met Frédéric Joliot in her mother’s laboratory; she was to find in him a mate who shared her interest in science, sports, humanism, and the arts.

…Irène Curie in conjunction with Frédéric Joliot, whom she had married in 1926 (see Joliot-Curie, Frédéric and Irène). This work prepared the way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and, above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie of artificial radioactivity.

In 1939, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Hans von Halban, and Lew Kowarski found that several neutrons were emitted in the fission of uranium-235, and this discovery led to the possibility of a self-sustaining chain reaction. Fermi and his coworkers recognized the enormous potential of such a reaction if it…