Professor Irène Joliot-Curie, c mid-20th century

Irène Joliot-Curie, born 12 September 1897, died 17 March 1956, was a French chemist and physicist, who is known for receiving the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. Joliot-Curie studied at the Sorbonne until 1916, when her studied were interrupted by WWI. She worked as a field nurse radiographer and in a radiological facility during WWI, receiving a military medal for her assistance in X-ray facilities in France and Belgium. She returned to the Sorbonne to obtain her degree in 1918, and then worked as her mother's assistant at the Radium Institute, she obtained her doctorate in 1925. In 1926, she married Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie, her mother's assistant, and they had two children. During WWII, she contracted tuberculosis and had to stay in neutral Switzerland in 1941 to 1944, eventually bringing her children with her due to the danger in Nazi-occupied France. In 1948, along with other scientists, Joliot-Curie created the first French nuclear reactor. She was the commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission in France. Joliot-Curie was a devout communist, and joined the Socialist Party in 1934, and later she was detained at Ellis Island on a trip to the US due to her views and connection to the Communist Party. Joliot-Curie was dedicated to promoting women's education. Joliot-Curie was diagnosed with leukaemia as she had been continuously exposed to radiation throughout her life, particularly to polonium. Joliot-Curie was given membership as an officer to the Legion of Honour due to her work in the resistance during WWII. In 1956, she died from leukaemia aged 58.