A French physicist who accidently discovered the existence of radioactivity in 1896. By chance, he put away in a drawer some unexposed photographic plates wrapped in black paper. In the drawer there was also a specimen of uranium salt. Later, the plates were found to be fogged and led to the conclusion that the uranium had emitted radiation that was sufficiently powerful to penetrate the wrapping. In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics with Marie and Pierre Curie. His father (Antoine César) and grandfather (Alexandre Edmond) were also eminent physicists and the three held, one after the other, the position of professor of physics at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle from 1837 to 1908.