Radioactivity discovered

Antoine-Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on 15 December 1852, the son of the French physicist Alexandre Edmond Becquerel who was known for his work on luminescence and phosphorescence. The young Becquerel studied science at the École Polytechnique in Paris where he too became interested in aspects of light absorption, eventually occupying the chair of physics, like his father and grandfather before him, at the École in 1895. 

Ernest Rutherford was born on 30 August 1871 in Brightwater, near Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand, one of 12 children. He won a scholarship to Canterbury College Christchurch in 1889 to study physics and mathematics, working initially on the magnetic properties of iron exposed to high-frequency radiation. 

Bill Griffith honours and explores the careers of these two remarkable scientists.