Iréne Curie inherited her great love of science from her famous parents, Marie and Pierre Curie, and another science partnership developed when she married Frédéric Joliot. Together they explored the forces of nature, and their discovery of artificial radioactivity won for them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Their dedication to science also led to the discovery of the neutron and the splitting of the atom.

Iréne was born in 1897, the same year that radioactivity was discovered. Her parents had shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of radium, and she grew up in the glare of their publicity. She resented the demands of their fame because it often separated her from them, but even as a child she absorbed their devotion to science. At twelve she already had the principal requirements for a scientist — curiosity, a sense of order and an obsession for exactness.

During the first World War she and her mother were active at the front, establishing radiological stations so that soldiers could be X-rayed and their wounds treated at once. Later she worked with her mother at the Institute of Radium, where she met handsome, charming Frédéric Joliot. Their marriage was as romantic as it was dramatic, for it became a scientific partnership. Their discovery of artificial radioactivity, which won them the Nobel Prize, led to the mass production of isotopes for medicine, for bio-chemical research, in industry, archaeology, oceanography and other sciences. Iréne was the second woman thus honored, Marie Curie being the first. Though this was the Joliot-Curies' most spectacular achievement, they made many other important contributions to nuclear physics.

All her life Iréne shunned fame, as her parents had, and when she died of over-exposure to radioactivity, practically all of France came to pay her homage. 

The story of these dedicated scientists is one of love, suspense and almost incredible adventure into the unknown. 

From the dust jacket