Pioneers in Optics: Alexandre Edmond Becquerel and William Henry Bragg

Abstract

Four successive generations of the Becquerel family were educated at the prestigious French scientific institution of higher learning, the École Polytechnique, and became physics professors at the French Museum of Natural History. Alexandre Edmond Becquerel was the son of Antoine César (1788– 1878), discoverer of piezoelectricity; father of Antoine Henri (1852– 1908), who discovered radioactivity; and the grandfather of Jean Antoine (1878–1953), who is best known for his work on relativity and the discovery of polarization rotation in the presence of a magnetic field. Though all of these notable scientists carried out a variety of experiments related to optics, it was Alexandre Edmond Becquerel who made the greatest contributions to the field.