Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel

Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel was a French physicist who in 1839, at the age of nineteen, discovered the photovoltaic effect while experimenting with metal electrodes immersed in an electrolyte solution and exposed to light, observing that the arrangement generated a small electric current. This discovery, made decades before anyone understood its practical significance, is the foundational physical phenomenon behind every solar photovoltaic cell built since. He was the father of Henri Becquerel, who later discovered radioactivity, and both men descended from a family of physicists associated with the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.