{"id":222835,"date":"2025-10-03T03:20:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/meet-irene-curie-the-nobel-winning-atomic-physicist-who-changed-the-course-of-modern-cancer-treatment"},"modified":"2025-10-03T03:20:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:20:04","slug":"meet-irene-curie-the-nobel-winning-atomic-physicist-who-changed-the-course-of-modern-cancer-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/meet-irene-curie-the-nobel-winning-atomic-physicist-who-changed-the-course-of-modern-cancer-treatment","title":{"rendered":"Meet Irene Curie, the Nobel-winning atomic physicist who changed the course of modern cancer treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/siYMeiR1Izg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The adage goes \u201clike mother like daughter,\u201d and in the case of Irene Joliot-Curie, truer words were never spoken. She was the daughter of two Nobel Prize laureates, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/physics\/1903\/marie-curie\/biographical\/\" target=\"_blank\">Marie Curie<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/physics\/1903\/pierre-curie\/biographical\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pierre Curie<\/a>, and was herself awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935 together with her husband, Frederic Joliot.<\/p>\n<p>While her parents received the prize for the discovery of natural radioactivity, Irene\u2019s prize was for the synthesis of <a href=\"https:\/\/chem.libretexts.org\/Bookshelves\/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps\/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)\/Nuclear_Chemistry\/Radioactivity\/Artificially_Induced_Radioactivity\" target=\"_blank\">artificial radioactivity<\/a>. This discovery changed many fields of science and many aspects of our everyday lives. Artificial radioactivity is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/about-nrc\/radiation\/around-us\/uses-radiation\" target=\"_blank\">used today in<\/a> medicine, agriculture, energy production, food sterilization, industrial quality control and more.<\/p>\n<p>We are two <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=vlmJRrsAAAAJ&hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">nuclear physicists<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=yehDLwEAAAAJ&hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">who perform experiments<\/a> at different accelerator facilities around the world. Irene\u2019s discovery laid the foundation for our experimental studies, which use artificial radioactivity to understand questions related to astrophysics, energy, medicine and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The adage goes \u201clike mother like daughter,\u201d and in the case of Irene Joliot-Curie, truer words were never spoken. She was the daughter of two Nobel Prize laureates, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, and was herself awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935 together with her husband, Frederic Joliot. While her parents received the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,873],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-nuclear-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}