Becquerel Becquerel The becquerel (; symbol: Bq) is the SI derived unit of radioactivity. One becquerel is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The becquerel is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s. The becquerel is named after Henri Becquerel, who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903 for their work in discovering radioactivity. As with every International System of Units (SI) unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is uppercase (Bq). However, when an SI unit is spelled out
Induced radioactivity Induced radioactivity Induced radioactivity, also called artificial radioactivity or man-made radioactivity, is the process of using radiation to cause a previously stable material to become radioactive. The husband and wife team of Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie (they both began using the surname Joliot-Curie when they married in 1926) discovered induced radioactivity in 1934, and they shared the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery. Irène Curie began her research with her parents, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, studying the natural radioactivity found in radioactive isotopes. Irène and Pierre Joliot-Curie Irene branched off from the Curies to study turning