Discovery of Radioactivity

The Discovery of Artificial Radioactivity

Frédéric Joliot was born in Paris on 19th March 1900. His older brother was killed in the first few days of the 1914-1918 war. Frédéric joined the École de physique et chimie industrielles in Paris, where he studied physics at the top of his class. In December 1924, director of studies, Paul Langevin, presented him to Marie Curie; he became her personal assistant at the Radium Institute, which ...

Discovery of Long - Lived Shape Isomeric States which Decay by Strongly Retarded High - Energy Particle Radioactivity

The reaction 28 Si + 181 Ta has been studied at E Lab =125 and 135 MeV. Coincidences between high energy particles and various X-and γ-rays from abnormally long-lived states were observed. e.g. 7.8-8.6 MeV α-particles with γ-rays of a superdeformed band, 5.1-5.5 MeV α-particles with X-and γ-rays of W, Re, and Pt, and 3.88 MeV particles (interpreted as protons) with 185.8 keV γ-rays. The data ar...

Two-proton radioactivity of 45Fe.

In an experiment at the SISSI-LISE3 facility of GANIL, the decay of the proton drip line nucleus 45Fe has been studied. Fragment-implantation events have been correlated with radioactive decay events in a 16x16 pixel silicon-strip detector. The decay-energy spectrum of 45Fe implants shows a distinct peak at (1.14+/-0.04) MeV with a half-life of T(1/2)=(4.7(+3.4)(-1.4)) ms. None of the events in...

Radioactivity of Sm153 and Eu155

Landscape of two-proton radioactivity.

Ground-state two-proton (2p) radioactivity is a decay mode found in isotopes of elements with even atomic numbers located beyond the two-proton drip line. So far, this exotic process has been experimentally observed in a few light- and medium-mass nuclides with Z≤30. In this study, using state-of-the-art nuclear density functional theory, we globally analyze 2p radioactivity and for the first t...