Jeanne Ferrier

Jeanne Ferrier
in 1940
Born(1888-04-06)April 6, 1888
Montpellier, France
DiedMay 23, 1979(1979-05-23) (aged 91)
Paris, France
EducationUniversity of Montpellier
Spouse(s)Samuel Lattès, Georges Fournier
Scientific career
FieldsRadiotherapy

Jeanne Ferrier, married names Jeanne Lattès and Jeanne Fournier, (April 6, 1888, Montpellier – May 23, 1979, Paris) was a French physicist. A pioneer in the field of radiotherapy, she was one of the most prominent figures at the Radium Institute in Paris where she collaborated with Marie Curie in the 1920s.

Early life and education

Born in Montpellier on April 6, 1888, Jeanne Ferrier was the daughter of the headmaster Zephirin Ferrier and his wife Louise née Crouzet, a schoolteacher. The first of the family's four children, she was passionately interested in science and went on to earn a dual degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Montpellier.

Career

Following her graduation, Ferrier became a science teacher at a boys' high school in Tarbes.

In 1910, she married her professor, Samuel Lattès, who died in 1918. After becoming a widow for the first time, she moved to Paris and joined Marie Curie's laboratory with the support of a Carnegie grant. There, she conducted research on tissue necrosis induced by radium radiation. Between 1921 and 1929, she carried out scientific research at the Radium Institute.

In 1924, she collaborated with Antoine Lacassagne on the detection and localisation of radioactive elements in cells. The method she developed, autoradiography, is considered one of the most significant contributions to biology in the 20th century.

At Marie Curie's lab - Jeanne Ferrier is top right, Sonia Cotelle is sat in the centre

On May 27, 1926, she defended her doctoral thesis titled "Étude, par la méthode d'absorption, du rayonnement du radium et de son rayonnement secondaire" (Study of Radium Radiation and Its Secondary Radiation by the Absorption Method), which was later published in the journal Annales de physique.

Around 1930, health concerns compelled her to cease working with radioactivity. She then joined the Henri Poincaré Institute as an assistant in probability calculations under Émile Borel's guidance, where she worked until her retirement in 1958.

Family

Jeanne Ferrier was first married to Samuel Lattès on August 17, 1910, and became a widow in 1918, with one daughter from this first marriage. In her second marriage, she wed her collaborator, physicist Georges Fournier, on August 31, 1929, with whom she had two children.

Notable works

Jeanne Lattès conducted research in the field of radioactivity, including studies on tissue necrosis caused by radium radiation and the detection of radioactive elements in cells. Some of her notable works include:

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Jeanne Ferrier, épouse Lattès puis Fournier". poolcorpus.univ-jfc.fr. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  2. ↑ Camilleri, Jean-Pierre. Pionniers de la radiotherapie (in French). EDP SCIENCES. p. 149. ISBN 978-2868838117.
  3. 1 2 3 Pigeard, Natalie (7 January 2026). "Jeanne Lattès" (in French). Musée Curie. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Les femmes du laboratoire de Marie Curie - Musée Curie". musee.curie.fr. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  5. 1 2 Pigeard-Micault, Natalie (2013). Les femmes du laboratoire de Marie Curie. Paris: Glyphe. ISBN 978-2-35815-111-5.
  6. ↑ Lattès, J.-S. (1926). "Étude par la méthode d'absorption du rayonnement du radium et de son rayonnement secondaire". Annales de Physique (in French). 10 (6): 102–182. doi:10.1051/anphys/192610060102. ISSN 0003-4169.