who discovered radioactivity

Radioactivity was first discovered by the French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896, while Marie and Pierre Curie later expanded the field and coined the term “radioactivity.”

Quick Scoop: Who discovered radioactivity?

• In early 1896, Henri Becquerel was studying uranium salts and their phosphorescence when he noticed that they fogged a photographic plate even when kept in the dark.
• From this, he concluded that uranium was emitting a new kind of penetrating radiation that did not depend on sunlight; this phenomenon is what is now called radioactivity.
• A few years later, Marie and Pierre Curie showed that other elements like thorium were also radioactive and discovered new highly radioactive elements, polonium and radium, firmly establishing the science of radioactivity and giving the phenomenon its name.

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