Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on 15th December 1852, in a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. He won the Physics Nobel Prize in the year 1903, along with Marie and Pierre Curie.
He was the first person to discover evidence of radioactivity. He studied how uranium salts are affected by light. By accident, he discovered that uranium salts spontaneously emit a penetrating radiation that can be caught on a photographic plate. Further studies made it clear that this radiation was something new and not X-ray radiation. Thus he discovered a new phenomenon, radioactivity. The term radioactivity was coined by Marie Curie.
Becquerel was an esteemed member of the European scientific community. He also belonged to the Accademia dei Lincei and the Royal Academy of Berlin, amongst other scholarly societies. He was named an officer of the French Legion of Honour in 1900.
Antoine Henri Becquerel died on 25th August, 1908. His work with radioactive materials, leaving him burned and scarred, may have contributed to his death. The SI unit for radioactivity, the Becquerel (Bq), is named after him.
Picture credit: google