Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
FRENCH PHYSICIST1852–1908 Antoine-Henri Becquerel was born the son of the physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel, and the grandson of the physicist Antoine-César Becquerel, and it is not surprising that he followed in their footsteps. It is also not surprising that his research interests centered around solar radiation and phosphorescence, as these are phenomena that his father had investigated. He entered the École Polytechnique, in Paris, in 1872, which he left in 1874 and to which he subsequently returned....

