This team exists because of a pile of uranium salt and an unexplained fogged photographic plate.
Becquerel noticed. I measured. That is how science begins.
What I discovered — and what took years of grinding ore to prove — is that radioactivity is an atomic property. Not chemical. Not molecular. The atom itself is the source. This was, at the time, a radical claim. Atoms were supposed to be immutable. I was told I must be measuring contamination.
I was not.
This team is for the full territory: alpha, beta, and gamma decay; half-lives and decay chains; nuclear structure; isotopes; fission and fusion; radiation detection and measurement; and the medical and industrial applications of radioactive materials.
I spent the better part of my life in proximity to radioactive substances without adequate protection — we did not yet know what we were dealing with. Science sometimes asks that price. We should at least make the knowledge worth the cost.
Bring your work here.
— M. Curie
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