Antoine Henri Becquerel Research Paper

Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852. He was a member of a family of scholars and scientists over four generations, including his grandfather, Antoine-Cesar Becquerel (1788-1878), his father, Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (1820-91), and his own son Jean Becquerel (1878-1953). After his early schooling at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Henri studied engineering at the École des Ponts et Chaussées (1874-77), history at the École Polytechnique (1872-74) and his fields of science were physics and chemistry.
In 1876 he became assistant teacher at the Ecole Polytechnique, where in 1892 he succeeded to the chair of physics at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, the third in his family to achieve this. In addition to his teaching
Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts released rays that resembled X-rays in their penetrating power. Becquerel was studying phosphorescence in uranium salts which is what resulted in him accidentally discovering radioactivity. He wrapped the fluorescent substance potassium uranyl in photographic plates and black material to use in an experiment that would need bright sunlight. However, before he could actually do the experiment, Becquerel saw that the photographic plates were already exposed and that the materials would glow in the dark after exposure to light. This discovery led Becquerel to investigate nuclear radiation and realised it did not need an external source of energy such as light, but seemed to rise spontaneously from uranium itself. He again wrapped the photographic plates in black paper but this time placed various phosphorescent salts on it. He found that all the salts were negative until he used uranium salts which left blackening of the plates. Becquerel learned that his uranium salts continued to release radiation even when they were not subjected to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight and he soon realised that the blackening of the plate had nothing to do with phosphorescence, as the plate blackened even when the salts were in the dark.
Originally it seemed that this new radiation was similar to the then recently-discovered X-rays. For months this research continued
On 26 December 1898, they then discovered and announced the existence of another element, which they named "radium" due to its intense radioactivity. Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in 1903 which she also shared with Becquerel and Pierre. Sadly on 19 April 1906 Pierre was walking across the Rue Dauphine and was struck by a horse-drawn carriage. He fell under its wheels and killed as his skull had been fractured. Eight years later, in 1911, Marie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element." Due to her long-term exposure to radiation, on 4 July 1934, Marie died at the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Haute-Savoie, eastern France, from aplastic anemia. The effects of ionizing radiation and the damage it causes on the body were not then known, and most of her work had been carried out in a shed without any protective clothing.
Becquerel was aware of how important is was to publish his discoveries quickly and if he had not presented his discovery to the Académie des Sciences the day after he made it, credit for the discovery of radioactivity and even his Nobel Prize, would have gone to Silvanus Thompson instead. After his phenomenal discovery, Becquerel made three more important contributions