Entry
Henri Becquerel — Physicist, discoverer of uranium radiation, 1852–1908
A polytechnicien then a bridges engineer, he worked on light and crystals before discovering by chance, in 1896, that a uranium salt fogs a photographic plate without having seen the sun. It was called hyperphosphorescence; the word radioactivity came from Marie Curie two years later. (Editorial synthesis)
Henri Becquerel was born on 15 December 1852. (source: Encyclopædia Britannica)
Henri Becquerel was born in Paris. (source: Encyclopædia Britannica)
Henri Becquerel died on 25 August 1908. (source: Encyclopædia Britannica)
Answers are drawn from a corpus established and verified by an editorial team; each one shows its source.
When a piece of information is not in that collection, the encyclopedia says so rather than inventing it — that principle is what makes every answer it does give trustworthy.