Nuclear chemistry beta decay

Bogumil Jeziorski received his M.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Warsaw in 1969. He conducted his graduate work also in Warsaw under the supervision of W. Kolos. After a postdoctoral position at the University of Utah, he was a research associate at the University of Florida and a Visiting Professor at the University of Waterloo, University of Delaware and University of Nijmegen. Since 1990 he has been a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Warsaw. His research has been mainly on the coupled-cluster theory of electronic correlation and on the perturbation theory of intermolecular forces. His other research interests include chemical effects in nuclear beta decay, theory of muonic molecules and relativistic and radiative effects in molecules. 

The V represents the antineutrino v is the neutrino. Neutrino and antineutrino emissions serve to balance the energy and rotation before and after decay. Neutrinos have no charge and little mass as a result, they interact to a vanishingly small degree with matter and are difficult to detect without elaborate apparatus. The neutrino (or antineutrino) must be included in the decay equation to conserve energy, angular momentum, and spin. The neutron, proton, beta particle, and neutrino all have a nuclear spin of 1 /2. A fuller discussion of this topic is in nuclear chemistry texts such as Choppin et al. (1995). 

Rutherford s work has made him known as the father of nuclear physics with his research on radioactivity (alpha and beta particles and protons, which he named), and he was the first to describe the concepts of half-life and decay constant. He showed that elements such as uranium transmute (become different elements) through radioactive decay, and he was the first to observe nuclear reactions (split the atom in 1917). In 1908 he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances. He was president of the Royal Society (1926-30) and of the Institute of Physics (1931-33) and was decorated with the Order of Merit (1925). He became Lord Rutherford in 1931. 

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