Professor Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie, c mid-20th century

Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie, born 14 March 1900, died 14 August 1958, was a French chemist and physicist known for receiving the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wife Irène Joliot-Curie for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They added to the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. Joliot-Curie was a researcher under Marie Skłodowska-Curie and married her daughter, Irène in 1926, they had two children. He worked on nuclear fission, and was mentioned by Albert Einstein in his letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt about key scientists working in nuclear matters. After the Nazi Invasion of France in 1940, Joliot-Curie smuggled his work to England, and he took an active part in the French Resistance. He was part of the 1941 founding of the National Front, and became its president. He joined the communist party in France. Operatives of the Alsos Mission, to find and take in those working in nuclear sciences, found Joliot-Curie in Collège de France and he was sent to England to be interviewed about the activities of German scientists. After WWII, he was Director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and was appointed by Charles De Gaulle in 1945 to be France's first High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. As he was a devoted communist, he was purged in 1950, but stayed on at Collège de France. Joliot-Curie died in 1958 from liver disease, aged 58, said to be caused from exposure to radiation. Joliot-Curie had been given numerous awards, including being a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Medicine, and named a Commander of the Legion of Honour. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Joliot-Curie was the first recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize (1950), for his work as president of the World Council of Peace.