Abstract EN:

Frédéric Joliot, called Joliot-Curie, got the nobel prize of chemistry with his wife irène Curie in 1935 for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. This French physicist belongs to a circle of ambitious scientists influenced by Marie Curie, Paul Langevin and Jean Perrin's outstanding personnalities. His fame - with the nobel prize - plus the outcoming of a government led by the front populaire, including a ministry of scientific research, favoured Joliot's plans to build laboratories equipped with particle accelerators, among which a cyclotron. Although he had been thinking of radiobiology, Joliot started to study chain nuclear reactions, in 1939, at the Collège de France, in order to achieve the liberation of nuclear energy. After the armistice, the laboratories' young manager stayed in France as one of the leaders of the scientific community and got involved in the resistance. At the liberation, having joined the communist party, he became head of the cnrs and founded the atomic energy committee (CEA). His aim was to use science for the reconstruction and modenization of France. His ambitious policy cut short. In june 1946 he stated that he would refuse to take part in any military nuclear program. The failure of the negociations about atomic energy at the united nations, in which he represented France, as well as the increasing threat of the cold war, brought Joliot-Curie to the head of the world peace council. He appealed for the atom bomb ban (appel de Stockholm in march 1950). He was dismissed from the cea by the government and then tried to rally the scientific community to react against all nuclear atmospheric tests. As chairman of the world scientific workers federation, he took part in the Einsteinrussell appeal (july 1955) an in the pugwash movement. In 1956 he was in charge of the new university - equipped with particle accelerators - in Orsay. That was meant to favor a fresh start for French nuclear physics.