12 September 10

September 12 marks the 1897 birthday of Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. She received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for her research in nuclear chemistry, at that time termed "artificial radioactivity." She worked extensively with polonium and other elements discovered by her parents, designing methods by which atoms of one element could be "transmuted" into another element (e.g., boron --> nitrogen).