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Foi o inventor quem descobriu a radiação.

Foi o inventor quem descobriu a radiação.
It was the inventor who discovered the radiation.
From Lesson 341:Emphasizing who and where (foi quem, é onde)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Breakdown of Foi o inventor quem descobriu a radiação.

ser
to be
quem
who
descobrir
to discover
o inventor
the inventor
a radiação
the radiation

Questions & Answers about Foi o inventor quem descobriu a radiação.

Could I use que instead of quem in this sentence?
Yes, you can say Foi o inventor que descobriu a radiação. Both are correct. However, using the foi... quem structure specifically emphasizes that a person did the action, which fits perfectly when focusing on o inventor.
If the subject were plural ('the inventors'), how would the verbs change in this foi... quem structure?
The first verb changes to plural (Foram os inventores), but the tricky part is that the verb after quem usually stays in the third-person singular in European Portuguese. So you would say Foram os inventores quem descobriu a radiação. If you used que instead, both verbs would be plural: Foram os inventores que descobriram a radiação.
Why do we use Foi instead of É at the beginning of the sentence?
In Portuguese cleft sentences, the verb ser usually matches the tense of the main action. Because the discovery happened in the past (descobriu), the emphasizing verb at the beginning must also be in the past tense (Foi). It sounds unnatural to mix tenses like É o inventor quem descobriu.
Why do we need the article a before radiação? Could we just say descobriu radiação?
In Portuguese, definite articles are almost always required before abstract nouns, scientific fields, or when speaking about a concept in a general sense. While English often drops the article (as in 'discovered radiation'), Portuguese requires a radiação here to sound correct.

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