Which country was Henri Becquerel from?

Henri Becquerel was from France. He was born in Paris in 1852 and came from a prominent French scientific family: his father, Edmond Becquerel, was also a physicist.

Becquerel became known for discovering natural radioactivity in 1896. While investigating fluorescent and phosphorescent materials, he found that uranium salts emitted penetrating radiation even when they had not been exposed to sunlight. This showed that the emission was not simply ordinary fluorescence.

His discovery grew out of the wider French physics tradition. Becquerel worked at the École Polytechnique and later held academic positions in Paris, including at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. He reported his findings to the French Academy of Sciences.

A common mix-up is confusing Becquerel's nationality with Marie Curie's birthplace. Curie was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Russian Empire, although she later worked in France. The unit of radioactivity, the becquerel, was named in his honour. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie.