Noddack, Ida

The isolation and identification of 4 radioactive elements in minute amounts took place at the turn of the century, and in each case the insight provided by the periodic classification into the predicted chemical properties of these elements proved invaluable. Marie Curie identified polonium in 1898 and, later in the same year working with Pierre Curie, isolated radium. Actinium followed in 1899 (A. Debierne) and the heaviest noble gas, radon, in 1900 (F. E. Dorn). Details will be found in later chapters which also recount the discoveries made in the present century of protactinium (O. Hahn and Lise Meitner, 1917), hafnium (D. Coster and G. von Hevesey, 1923), rhenium (W. Noddack, Ida Tacke and O. Berg, 1925), technetium (C. Perrier and E. Segre, 1937), francium (Marguerite Percy, 1939) and promethium (J. A. Marinsky, L. E. Glendenin and C. D. Coryell, 1945). 

Rhenium - the atomic number is 75 and the chemical symbol is Re. The name derives from the Latin rhenus for the Rhine river in Germany . It was discovered by x-ray spectroscopy in 1925 by the German chemists, Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke and Otto Berg. 

Rhenium Re 1925 (Berlin, Germany) Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke Noddack and Otto Berg (all German) 155... 

The element was discovered in 1925 by Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke Noddack, and 0. Berg. They detected it by x-ray examination of platinum ores. X-ray studies also showed its occurrence in columbite and other minerals. It was named after the German river Rhine, called Rhenus in Latin. In 1929, Walter and Ida Noddack produced Ig of rhenium metal from 660 kg of Norwegian molybdenite. 

German chemists Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke, and Otto Berg rediscover and name rhenium. 

The name comes from the Greek technetos, meaning artificial. There were claims to have discovered element 43 as early as 1877, based on the predicted existence of eka-manganese. In 1925, Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke, and Otto Berg claimed to have found the element, calling it masurium. Definitive proof was made by Emilio G. Segre (1905-1989) in 1937, who was studying a small piece of radioactive molybdenum created at the Berkeley cyclotron. 

Discovery The existence of rhenium was predicted in 1871 by Mendelejev, who named it dvi-man-ganese. Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke and Otto Berg discovered rhenium in Beriin in 1925. 

This kind of argument was given by Ida Noddack, for example, as described by Van Tiggelen [16]. 

Rhenium (75) was discovered in 1925 by Ida Tacke and Walter Noddack as the last naturally occurring element. The first artificially produced element was identified by Emilio G. Segre in 1937. Ernest Lawrence detected technetium in a molybdenum sample, which he had bombarded in his cyclotron. All elements discovered since then have been generated artificially. 

Technetium Tc 1925 (Berlin, Germany) 1937 (Berkeley, California) Walter Noddack and Ida Tacke Noddack (both German) Emilio Segre (Italian-American) and Carlo Perrier (Italian) 130... 

Two new elements of the manganese group, numbers 43 (eka-manganese) and 75 (dwi-manganese), were announced in June, 1925, by the German chemists Dr. Walter Noddack and Dr. Ida Tacke of the Physico-Technical Testing Office in Berlin and Dr. Otto Berg of the Werner-Siemens Laboratory. The discovery was not accidental, but the... 

In May 1925, at last, the X-ray measurements seemed to indicate the presence of both elements 43 and 75. The first mention of the discovery was made at a very high level, at a meeting of the Preujiische Akademie der Wissenschaften, thanks to Walther Nernst who had been Walter Noddack s mentor. [17] The results were published in the prestigious journal Die Naturwissenschaften soon after, in a two-fold contribution. A first section of the paper is devoted to the analytical and geochemical part of the investigation, whereas the second section deals exclusively with the X-ray spectroscopy, [18] and Ida co-authors both contributions. In Walter s and Ida s mind however, the quest was not yet finished. Walter Noddack publicly declared that the crucial point to assess the existence of these two new elements was to produce samples and to hand them over to colleagues. [19]... 

Walter and Ida (just married) were very much aware of the fact that the only possibility to establish their credibility was to produce weighable samples of both rhenium and masurium, and decided to explore new ways of enrichment and production. One obvious way was to find ores that contained more rhenium and masurium than those already used. To achieve this, the couple undertook several trips to Scandinavia and Russia in 1926-1930. [20] The Noddacks convinced Siemens und Halske that rhenium could become an industrial product very soon thanks to Siemens sponsoring (40000 Marks) and material help (a small laboratory was set up at their disposal for several months), the first gram of a rhenium salt was obtained in 1929. [21] At this point, the investigation of the chemical properties of rhenium could begin and they showed that most of the predictions made on the basis of the spectra alone were not far from reality. 

Until the end of their lives, Ida and Walter Noddack kept an eye on the chemistry of rhenium and especially on that of technetium. This is especially remarkable when... 

Ida Noddack s proposal of the fission process has awakened interest in the history of science since Gerald Holton unearthed the case in 1973. See T. Hopper, She was ignored. Ida Noddack and the Discovery of Nuclear Fission, Master s thesis, Stanford University, 1990, and F. Habashi, Ida Noddack proposes of nuclear fission, in M.F, Rayner-Canham and G.W. Rayner-Canham (eds.), A Devotion to their Science Pioneer Women in Radioactivity (Philadelphia Chemical Heritage Foundation - Me Gill s University Press, 1997), 217-225. 

File on W. Noddack s denazification, 1945-1947, K. U. Leuven Archives, Nod-dack-Tacke Papers, 764-769. On the value of the denazification process see R. L. Sime, Lise Meitner, on 356-357 and references therein. Ida was not affected by denazification, though her behavior during the nazi period was under investigation in 1963-1964. Official document, K.U. Leuven Archives, Noddack-Tacke Papers, 1231, and file on the legal investigation of Ida Noddack in 1963-1964, K.U. Leuven Archives, Noddack-Tacke Papers, 1232. 

This interpretation is based on the correspondence of Ida with Otto Honigschmid, 1934-1935. K. U. Leuven Archives, Noddack-Tacke Papers, 1032. 

Figure 9.3 The relative abundance of the rare earth elements according to Goldschmidt and Thomassen (above) and Ida Noddack (below[57]). The Noddacks found a much higher abundance of neodymium than the Norwegian researchers, but their data were not generally accepted. Both diagrams illustrate the Oddo-Harkins rule very clearly.

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