Learn about Henri Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity in 1896 and shared the Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903. Explore his education, research, and contributions to physics and science.

Born: 15 December 1852, Paris, France. Died: 25 August 1908, France. Affiliation at the time of the award: École Polytechnique, Paris, France. Prize motivation: “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity”. Prize share: 1/2.

Antoine Henri Becquerel (born December 15, 1852 in Paris, France), known as Henri Becquerel, was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity, a process in which an atomic nucleus emits particles because it is unstable. He won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie, the latter of whom was Becquerel’s graduate student.

Henri Becquerel, (born Dec. 15, 1852, Paris, France—died Aug. 25, 1908, Le Croisic), French physicist. His grandfather, Antoine-César (1788–1878), was one of the founders of the field of electrochemistry, and his father, Alexandre-Edmond (1820–91), made important studies of light phenomena.

Learn how Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity in 1896, and how he and the Curies shared the Nobel Prize for their work. Find out how Becquerel's experiment differed from that of Abel Niepce de Saint Victor, who made the same discovery 40 years earlier.

Henri Becquerel was a French physicist and Nobel laureate who discovered radioactivity in 1896. He was the third generation of a family of scientists and collaborated with the Curies in their studies of radioactivity.

Like Thomson’s discovery of the electron, the discovery of radioactivity in uranium by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896 forced scientists to radically change their ideas about atomic structure. Radioactivity demonstrated that the atom was neither indivisible nor immutable.

Henri Becquerel. Antoine Henri Becquerel (15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French physicist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with Marie Curie and Pierre Curie for his discovery of radioactivity in 1896. [1] This happened when a piece of pitchblende ruined some photographic film and he investigated.

Henri Becquerel. In 1896, inspired by Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen's discovery of x-rays, Becquerel investigated the possibility that such x-rays could cause phosphorescence and whether phosphorescent materials could emit x-rays.