George De Hevesy Research Paper

George Charles de Hevesy was born on August 1, 1885, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. George was the fifth of 8 children. He was born in to a wealthy family of industrialists (. He was the son of Louis de Hevesy and Eugénie, née Baroness Schosberger. George’s dad was a court counsellor. Growing up George didn’t have a relative associated with the scientific field, so his decision to become a chemist was made by him. George found interest in the scientific field at a very young age; George saw many interests in the scientific field and decided that’s what he wanted to do, nobody outside the family influenced him to do so. George de Hevesy’s nationality is Hungarian. George was Roman Catholic. George was in school his whole life; he started

238 element uranium. George was given the task by Rutherford to separate the newly found radioactive isotope radium-d from ordinary lead. After about two years of trial and error, George came to the conclusion that the radium-d and lead were impossible to separate. According to McMurray, Emily J. editor of the Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists, the reasons his task didn’t work was because the lead he used, which is commonly referred to as lead-210 had the same number of protons and electrons, but had a different number of neutrons in its nucleus. Although Hevesy was not successful with the separation he learned more about radium-D and decided use radium-D to trace the course of lead in chemical processes. In 1913, George joined up with Friedrich Paneth at the Vienna Institute of Radium Research. George was able to conduct precise studies of lead salts by mixing an enormous amount of radium-D with regular lead salt. Then he determined the amount of salt dissolved by measuring the proportion of radioactivity in the solution. Both George and Friedrich proved that the electrochemical properties of radium-D were identical with lead. This added to the ever growing evidence of the existence of isotopes (Pg. 914). In 1922 with the help of Dirk Coster he co-discovered the element 72, hafnium. They were able to realize this