Irène Joliot-Curie

French scientist, an assistant to her mom at the Radium Institute lab after WW II. Not an attractive woman, she was the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, famous scientist themselves.

After a marriage to her mother's assistant, chemist Frederic Joliot 9 October 1926, they investigated the formation of electrons and positrons by the passage of hi-energy radiation through matter in 1933. They were able to determine the conditions under which these formations could occur. In 1934 they worked on alpha rays and the radioactive isotope of nitrogen, winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work the following year.

In 1950 they were denied further participation in the Atomic Energy Board due to their outspoken involvement with the communist party during the German occupation for the prior decade.

She died of leukemia, the same as her mother, on 17 March 1956, Paris, France.