What is Becquerel's theory of radioactivity?
My work did not articulate a comprehensive 'theory' in the grand sense of establishing a new theoretical framework. Rather, my observations led to the understanding of a novel phenomenon: radioactivity. I found that certain uranium compounds emitted rays spontaneously, a property I termed 'radioactivity' in my 'Note sur une propriété nouvelle des rayons uraniques.' The experiments indicated that this emission was not due to phosphorescence, as some initially speculated, but was an intrinsic characteristic of the uranium atom. This phenomenon suggested that atoms, previously considered immutable, could undergo some form of internal transformation leading to this emission.
Ask Antoine Henri Becquerel the follow-up →