The becquerel is the unit of radioactivity in the International System of Units (SI). One becquerel is defined as an activity of one per second, on average, for aperiodic activity events referred to a radionuclide. For applications relating to human health this is a small quantity, and SI multiples of the unit are commonly used.
The becquerel is named after Henri Becquerel, who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903 for their work in discovering radioactivity.