Hevesy

The use of radioactive tracers was pioneered by Georg von Hevesy, a Hungarian physical chemist, who received the Nobel Prize in 1943 for his work on radioactive indicators (1). Radioisotopes have become indispensable components of most medical and life science research strategies, and in addition the technology is the basis for numerous industries focused on the production and detection of radioactive tracers. Thousands of radioactive tracers have been synthesized and are commercially available. These are used worldwide in tens of thousands of research laboratories. 

G. Hevesy, Radioactive Indicators, Interscience PubHshers, New York, 1948. 

There is no space here to go into the enormous body of experiment and theory that has emerged from von Hevesy s initiative. The reader is referred to an excellent critical overview by Seeger (1997). Important concepts such as the random-walk... 

The neutron activation technique mentioned in the preceding paragraph is only one of a range of nuclear methods used in the study of solids - methods which depend on the response of atomic nuclei to radiation or to the emission of radiation by the nuclei. Radioactive isotopes ( tracers ) of course have been used in research ever since von Hevesy s pioneering measurements of diffusion (Section 4.2.2). These techniques have become a field of study in their own right and a number of physics laboratories, as for instance the Second Physical Institute at the University of Gottingen, focus on the development of such techniques. This family of techniques, as applied to the study of condensed matter, is well surveyed in a specialised text... 

G. Hevesy (Stockholm) use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes. 

The isotope dilution principle, first employed by Hevesy and Hobbie (133) in 1932 for the determination of lead in ores, was applied by Schoenheimer et al. (241) to the determination of amino acids. [Shemin and Foster (248) have reviewed this topic.] An N15-amino acid derivative was added to a protein hydrolyzate, a sample of the amino acid to be determined was isolated and purified, the excess N15 in this product was estimated with the mass spectrograph, and the grams of amino acid originally present were calculated from Equation 2. 

This fact was verified experimentally by Paneth and Hevesy, who found that the redox potentials of bismuth cells containing different isotopes of the metal produced indistinguishable values. 

Handbook der Physik, Vol. XXX. Rbntgenstrahlen, Julius Springer, Berlin, 1957. G. von Hevesy, Chemical Analysis by X-rays and Its Applications, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1932. 

G. von Hevesy and E. Alexander, Praktikum der ehemischen Analyse mil Rontgen-strahlen, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig, 1933. 

G. von Hevesy, Chemical Analysis by X-rays and Its Applications, Chapter 9. 

George de Hevesy (1885-1966 Nobel Prize for chemistry 1943) and Dirk Coster (1889-1950). The search for this element was long, and it was eventually found as a companion of zirconium minerals by means of X-ray spectroscopy. 

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