George de Hevesy | |
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Born | György Bischitz 1 August 1885 |
Died | 5 July 1966 | (aged 80)
Citizenship |
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Education | University of Budapest Technische Universität Berlin University of Freiburg |
Known for | |
Spouse |
Pia Riis (m. 1924) |
Children | 4 |
Parents |
|
Awards | Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1943) Copley Medal (1949) Faraday Lectureship Prize (1950) Atoms for Peace Award (1958) Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Chemistry |
Institutions | Ghent University University of Budapest Niels Bohr Institute ETH Zürich University of Freiburg University of Manchester Stefan Meyer Institute for Subatomic Physics |
Doctoral advisor | Georg Franz Julius Meyer |
Other academic advisors | Fritz Haber Ernest Rutherford |
Doctoral students | Rolf Hosemann Johann Böhm |
Other notable students | Erika Cremer (postdoc) |
George Charles de Hevesy (born György Bischitz; Hungarian: Hevesy György Károly; German: Georg Karl von Hevesy; 1 August 1885 – 5 July 1966) was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals. He also co-discovered the element hafnium.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
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Tricking the Nazis and Transforming Medicine: George de Hevesy
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George De Hevesy | Destroying the Nobel Prize
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Nobel Prize Winner - George de Hevesy
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Hiding a Nobel Prize From the Nazis
Transcription
Since ancient times, scientists have tried to peak inside the living body. Chemist Gyorgy Hevesy’s work in this area transformed medicine. He also happened to foil the Nazis along the way. [Legends of Chemistry intro] In 1911, chemist György Hevesy faced an impossible task. His lab director in England had asked him to separate out the radioactive atoms from the nonradioactive atoms inside a block of lead, so they could study the radioactive atoms more easily. But no one back then understood that separations like that are impossible through strictly chemical means. So Hevesy wasted two years on the project before finally giving up. To make things worse, Hevesy—a bald, mustachioed Hungarian—was homesick and hated the cooking at his boarding house. He grew suspicious that his landlady’s “fresh” daily meat wasn’t so fresh, like a high school cafeteria recycling Monday’s hamburgers into Tuesday’s beef chili. She denied this, so Hevesy hatched a plan—a plan based on an unexpected breakthrough in his research. He still couldn’t isolate the radioactive lead atoms, but he realized that maybe he could flip that to his advantage. He imagined injecting some dissolved lead into a living creature. The creature would metabolize both the normal lead and the radioactive lead—but the radioactive lead would send out beacons of radioactivity as it moved through the body. If this worked, Hevesy could see inside veins and organs with an unprecedented degree of resolution. Before he tried these radioactive tracers on a living being, though, Hevesy tested his idea on the tissue of a nonliving being—his dinner. He took an extra helping of meat one night and, when the landlady’s back was turned, sprinkled radioactive lead powder on it. She gathered his leftovers, and the next day Hevesy brought home a newfangled radiation detector. Sure enough, when he waved the Geiger counter over that night’s meal, it went crazy: click- click-click-click. He’d caught her recycling dinner red-handed. This was a dangerous stunt, but it proved that the radioactive tracers worked! And over the next two decades, Hevesy developed the idea further, allowing doctors to see inside living hearts and brains for the first time. The work proved so important that chemists kept nominating Hevesy for the Nobel Prize, but he kept losing out. Hevesy did have a strange run-in with the Nobel Prize, however. In August 1940 Nazi storm troopers invaded Copenhagen, Denmark and knocked on the front door of the institute where Hevesy was working. This was bad. A few years earlier, two German scientists who hated the Nazis had sent their gold Nobel medals to Denmark for safekeeping. Adolf Hitler had made exporting gold a state crime, and if the Nazi soldiers found German Nobel medals in Copenhagen, it could lead to multiple executions. So as Hevesy recalled, “while the invading forces marched in the streets... I was busy dissolving the medals” in liquid. He used aqua regia—a caustic mix of nitric and hydrochloric acids that can dissolve gold. The Nazis ransacked the institute for loot, but left the beaker of aqua regia untouched. Hevesy had to flee to Stockholm in 1943, but when he returned to his battered laboratory in 1945, he found the beaker undisturbed on a shelf. He reconstituted the gold, and the Nobel academy recast the medals for the scientists. Hevesy’s only complaint about the ordeal was the day of lab work he missed while fleeing Copenhagen. In recent decades, several chemists have built on Hevesy’s vision and developed other tools for peering inside our organs. Like green fluorescent protein. GFP appears naturally in some sea creatures, and it causes them to glow an eerie green when exposed to blue or ultraviolet light. In the 1960s a Japanese organic chemist named Osamu Shimomura isolated GFP from the crystal jellyfish and analyzed it. GFP remained just a curiosity, though, until 1988, when American biochemist Martin Chalfie had a flash of genius. Chalfie worked with tiny worms, and he wanted to determine which worm cells made certain proteins. GFP was the answer. Chalfie isolated the DNA in jellyfish that makes GFP. He then inserted that DNA into the worm DNA that created the protein of interest. As a result, whenever the worm made that protein, it made GFP, too. Chalfie could then see which cells did and didn’t make the target protein by shining light on the worm and seeing which cells glowed green. The same technique worked in mice and other mammals, too. Later, the American chemist Roger Tsien expanded the palate of GFP. By swapping in different DNA and changing GFP’s structure, he could make the molecule glow blue or yellow instead; other scientists added red. As a result, they could now study a rainbow of several target proteins at once. Overall, fluorescent proteins allowed scientists to not only see inside organs like the brain, but to study different biochemical activity in different regions. Tsien, Chalfie, and Shimomura won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008. Oh, and speaking of Nobel Prizes, I’m happy to say that György Hevesy, after heroically dissolving the gold medals, did pick up a Nobel Prize of his own, for radioactive tracers. And to think, it all started with a bad meal and a prank on his landlady... Thanks for watching Chemheads! If you want more episodes on Sam Kean, check out Megaladon or check out Legends of Chemistry Volume 1, all about the accidental discoveries that made history. And don’t forget to subscribe. See you soon.
Biography
Early years
Hevesy György was born in Budapest, Hungary, to a wealthy and ennobled family of Hungarian-Jewish descent,[7] the fifth of eight children to his parents Lajos Bischitz and Baroness Eugénia (Jenny) Schossberger (ennobled as "De Tornya"). Grandparents from both sides of the family had provided the presidents of the Jewish community of Pest.[7] His parents converted to Roman Catholicism.[8] George grew up in Budapest and graduated high school in 1903 from Piarist Gimnázium.[9] The family's name in 1904 was Hevesy-Bischitz, and Hevesy later changed his own.
De Hevesy began his studies in chemistry at the University of Budapest for one year, and at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin) for several months, but transferred to the University of Freiburg. There he met Ludwig Gattermann. In 1906, he started his Ph.D. thesis with Georg Franz Julius Meyer,[10] acquiring his doctorate in physics in 1908. In 1908, Hevesy was offered a position at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, yet being independently wealthy, he was able to choose his research environment. He worked first with Fritz Haber in Karlsruhe, Germany, then with Ernest Rutherford in Manchester, England, where he also met Niels Bohr. Back at home in Budapest, he was appointed professor in physical chemistry in 1918. In 1920, he settled in Copenhagen.
Research
In 1922, de Hevesy co-discovered (with Dirk Coster) the element hafnium (72Hf) (Latin Hafnia for "Copenhagen", the home town of Niels Bohr). Mendeleev's 1869 periodic table arranged the chemical elements into a logical system, but a chemical element with 72 protons was missing. Hevesy determined to look for that element on the basis of Bohr's atomic model. The mineralogical museum of Norway and Greenland in Copenhagen furnished the material for the research. Characteristic X-ray spectra recordings made of the sample indicated that a new element was present. The accepted account has been disputed by Mansel Davies and Eric Scerri who attribute the prediction that element 72 would be a transition element to the chemist Charles Bury.[citation needed]
Supported financially by the Rockefeller Foundation, Hevesy had a very productive year. He developed the X-ray fluorescence analytical method, and discovered the samarium alpha-ray. It was here he began the use of radioactive isotopes in studying the metabolic processes of plants and animals, by tracing chemicals in the body by replacing part of stable isotopes with small quantities of the radioactive isotopes. In 1923, Hevesy published the first study on the use of the naturally radioactive 212Pb as radioactive tracer to follow the absorption and translocation in the roots, stems and leaves of Vicia faba, also known as the broad bean.[11][12] Later, in 1943, the work on radioactive tracing would earn Hevesy the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[13]
In 1924, Hevesy returned to Freiburg as Professor of Physical Chemistry. In 1930, he went to Cornell University, Ithaca as Baker Lecturer. In 1934, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, he returned to Niels Bohr's Institute at the University of Copenhagen. In 1936, he invented Neutron Activation Analysis. In 1943 he fled to Stockholm (Sweden being neutral during the war), where he an associate of the Institute of Research in Organic Chemistry. In 1949 he was elected Franqui Professor in the University of Ghent. In his retirement, he remained an active scientific associate of the University of Stockholm.
World War II and beyond
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Prior to the onset of World War II, Max von Laue and James Franck had sent their gold Nobel Prize medals to Denmark to keep them from being confiscated by the Nazis. After the Nazi invasion of Denmark this placed them in danger; it was illegal at the time to send gold out of Germany, and were it discovered that Laue and Franck had done so, they could have faced prosecution. To prevent this, de Hevesy concealed the medals by dissolving them in aqua regia and placing the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the medals using the recovered gold and returned them to the two laureates.[14][15]
By 1943, Copenhagen was no longer safe for a Jewish scientist and de Hevesy fled to Sweden, where he worked at the University of Stockholm until 1961. In Stockholm, de Hevesy was received at the department of chemistry by the Swedish professor and Nobel Prize winner Hans von Euler-Chelpin, who remained strongly pro-German throughout the war. Despite this, de Hevesy and von Euler-Chelpin collaborated on many scientific papers during and after the war.
While in Stockholm, de Hevesy received the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He was later inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and received the Copley Medal, of which he was particularly proud. De Hevesy stated: "The public thinks the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the highest honor that a scientist can receive, but it is not so. Forty or fifty have received Nobel chemistry prizes, but there are only ten foreign members of the Royal Swedish Academy, and only two have received a Copley." (Bohr was the other one.) He received the Atoms for Peace Award in 1958 for his peaceful use of radioactive isotopes.
Family life and death
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De Hevesy married Pia Riis in 1924. They had one son and three daughters together, one of whom (Eugenie) married a grandson of the Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius.[16] De Hevesy died in 1966 at the age of eighty and was buried in Freiburg. In 2000, his body was moved to the Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest, Hungary. He had published a total of 397 scientific documents, one of which was the Becquerel-Curie Memorial Lecture, in which he had reminisced about the careers of pioneers of radiochemistry.[17] At his family's request, his ashes were interred at his birthplace in Budapest on 19 April 2001.
On 10 May 2005 the Hevesy Laboratory[18] was founded at Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, now Technical University of Denmark, DTU Nutech. It was named after George de Hevesy as the father of the isotope tracer principle under the initiative of the lab's first director, Prof. Mikael Jensen.
See also
- August Krogh
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates
- Johanna Bischitz de Heves
- 10444 de Hevesy
- Hevesy (crater)
- The Martians (scientists)
- Hungarian Nobel Prize winners
References
- ^ a b Cockcroft, J. D. (1967). "George de Hevesy 1885-1966". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 13: 125–126. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1967.0007. S2CID 122095945.
- ^ Levi, H. (1976). "George von Hevesy memorial lecture. George Hevesy and his concept of radioactive indicators--in retrospect". European Journal of Nuclear Medicine. 1 (1): 3–10. doi:10.1007/BF00253259. PMID 797570. S2CID 6640231.
- ^ Ostrowski, W. (1968). "George Hevesy inventor of isotope methods in biochemical studies". Postepy Biochemii. 14 (1): 149–153. PMID 4870858.
- ^ Dal Santo, G. (1966). "Professor George C. De Hevesy. In reverent memory". Acta Isotopica. 6 (1): 5–8. PMID 4865432.
- ^ "George De Hevesy". Triangle; the Sandoz Journal of Medical Science. 91: 239–240. 1964. PMID 14184278.
- ^ Weintraub, B. (April 2005), "George de Hevesy: Hafnium and Radioactive Traces; Chemistry", Bull. Isr. Chem. Soc. (18): 41–43
- ^ a b Levi, Hilde (1985), George de Hevesy : life and work : a biography, Bristol: A. Hilger, p. 14, ISBN 978-0-85274-555-7
- ^ "George de Hevesy, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1943". geni_family_tree. August 1885.
- ^ Náray-Szabó, Gábor; G, Palló (2012), The Hungarian Gymnasium Educational Experience and Its Influence on the Global Power Shift, Global Science & Technology Forum, ISBN 9780615573106, retrieved 6 June 2023
- ^ Norrby, Erling (2013), Nobel Prizes and Nature's Surprises
- ^ Myers, W. G. (1979). "Georg Charles de Hevesy: The father of nuclear medicine". Journal of Nuclear Medicine. 20 (6): 590–594. PMID 395289.
- ^ Hevesy, G. (1923). "The Absorption and Translocation of Lead by Plants: A Contribution to the Application of the Method of Radioactive Indicators in the Investigation of the Change of Substance in Plants". The Biochemical Journal. 17 (4–5): 439–445. doi:10.1042/bj0170439. PMC 1263906. PMID 16743235.
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1943". NobelPrize.org.
- ^ Hevesy, George (1962), Adventures in radioisotope research, vol. 1, New York: Pergamon press, p. 27
- ^ Birgitta Lemmel (2006). "The Nobel Prize Medals and the Medal for the Prize in Economics". The Nobel Foundation.
- ^ Scripps Log obituaries, http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/biogr/ScrippsLogObits.pdf Archived 21 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ De Hevesy, George C. (1961), "Marie Curie and her contemporaries" (PDF), Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 2: 169–82, PMID 13714019
- ^ Hevesy Laboratory
External links
Media related to George de Hevesy at Wikimedia Commons
- George de Hevesy on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture on 12 December 1944 Some Applications of Isotopic Indicators
- Annotated bibliography for George de Hevesy from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- Works by or about George de Hevesy at the Internet Archive
- Zsigmondy Richárd (1925)
- Hevesy György (1943)
- Polányi János (1986)
- Oláh György (1994)
- Herskó Ferenc (2004)
- Kertész Imre (2002)
- Lénárd Fülöp (1905)
- Wigner Jenő (1963)
- Gábor Dénes (1971)
- Krausz Ferenc (2023)
- Bárány Róbert (1914)
- Szent-Györgyi Albert (1937)
- Békésy György (1961)
- Karikó Katalin (2023)
- Harsányi János (1994)