Aleksander edmund becquerel biography

He decided, however, to refuse both these opportunities in order to assist his father at the museum. In electricity he measured the properties of currents and investigated the conditions under which they arose. He also studied the separate effects of the liquid, the metal, the temperature, and the polarization of the electrodes on the functioning of voltaic piles.

From to , Becquerel devoted most of his attention to the investigation of diamagnetism. Just as specifically heavier bodies sink and lighter bodies rise in a liquid, so substances less magnetic than their surroundings are pushed away from a magnet, whereas the more magnetic ones are attracted to it. Becquerel set out to measure the magnetic properties of oxygen, one of the substances composing the milieu in which magnetic action most often took place.

He condensed a large volume of the gas in a glass tube filled with highly absorbent charcoal. When placed in a magnetic field, the tube containing oxygen was found to be much more magnetic than one containing only charcoal.

Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel known as Edmond Becquerel, was a French physicist who studied the solar spectrum, magnetism, electricity and optics.

Becquerel attempted in vain to overcome this objection by assigning magnetic and thus electrical properties to the ether. In he demonstrated that electrical currents arose from certain light-induced chemical reactions. Later, he showed that by relating light intensity to heat intensity one could use this device to determine optically the temperatures of extremely hot bodies.

In spectroscopy Becquerel revealed in the presence of Fraunhofer lines in photographs of the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum.

French physicist who discovered radioactivity through his investigations of uranium and other substances.

Becquerel did his most important work in optics on the phenomena of luminescence. In the middle years of the nineteenth century, he virtually monopolized the significant discoveries made in this field. His researches began in , when he published a paper dealing primarily with the effects of temperature on the duration of phosphorescent light emission.