Giesel, Friedrich

Friedrich O. Giesel (bom 1852) was for many years a chemist at the quinine works of Braunschweig Buchler and Company, and in the early days he worked up large quantities of radioactive minerals and generously distributed his radium among investigators in all parts of the world (56). 

Actinium was discovered a second time in 1902. German chemist Friedrich O. Giesel (1852-1927) had not heard of Debierne s earlier discovery. Giesel suggested the name emanium, from the word emanation, which means to give off rays. Debierne s name was adopted, however, because he discovered actinium first. 

Ber, 1900, xxxiii, 1665, 3569 1901, xxxiv, 3772 1902, xxxv, 3608 (ment. Debierne) 1903, xxxvi, 342 (Emanationskorper) 1904, xxxvii, 1696, 3963 (Emanium) 1905, xxxviii, 775 1907, xl, 3011. Friedrich O. Giesel (Winzig, Silesia, 20 May 1852-Brunswick, 14 November 1927), chemist in a quinine factory in Brunswick (1878), made radium, etc., for sale from 1899. Rutherford, Radio-Activity, 1905, 217, said GieseFs breath was strongly radioactive from breathing radium emanation, but he lived over twenty years after this. 

Friedrich Ernst Dom in 1900. He used the same apparatus as Rutherford with thorium emanation and confirmed this. Using radium bromide he found a similar emanation, which did not penetrate aluminium as Rutherford (incorrectly) said thorium emanation did. Some doubts about the existence of radium emanation were removed by Rutherford and Soddy, who liquefied it by cooling in liquid air, and by Ramsay and Collie, who determined its spectrum. R. W. Gray and Ramsay determined its density by weighing on a microbalance and proposed for it the name m/on, shining . Actinium emanation was discovered by Debieme and by Giesel. The modem names thoron, radon, and actinon were proposed by W. Schmidt. ... 

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