Henri becquerel biography summary organizer

French physicist (–)

Antoine Henri Becquerel (;^[3]French:[ɑ̃ʁibɛkʁɛl]; 15 December – 25 August ) was a French physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie for his discovery of radioactivity.^[4] The SI unit of radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him.

Biography

Family and education

Becquerel was born in Paris, France, into a wealthy family which produced four generations of notable physicists, including Becquerel's grandfather (Antoine César Becquerel), father (Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel), and son (Jean Becquerel).^[5] Henri started off his education by attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand school, a prep school in Paris.^[5] He studied engineering at the École Polytechnique and the École des Ponts et Chaussées.^[6]

Career

In Becquerel's early career, he became the third in his family to occupy the physics chair at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturell