George de Hevesy
George Charles de Hevesy ( György Hevesy actually, Georg Karl von Hevesy, born August 1, 1885 in Budapest, † July 5, 1966 in Freiburg im Breisgau) was a Hungarian chemist.
Family background
Parents George of Hevesys were the Vice President of the Upper Hungarian Mining and Metallurgical Works Ludwig ( Lajos ) Bischitz de Heves (* October 16, 1853 Pest; † August 13, 1920 in Budapest) and Jenny ( Eugenie ) Baroness Scho Berger de Tornya ( * ca 1857, † April 10, 1931 in Budapest ), daughter of the Budapest industrialist Baron Sigmund Scho Berger de Tornya and from Vienna coming Therese Mayer. The Hevesy family came from the Budapest Jewish haute bourgeoisie. Ludwig Bischitz de Heves had Magyarised the spelling of his name early in Bisicz, but received by April 13, 1904 for permission to change the name to Hevesy Bisicz de Heves, he subsequently received on 25 December 1906, the permission to only de Hevesy Heves or simply be able to call only de Hevesy. The paternal grandfather George de Hevesys, David Bischitz, received in 1895 the Hungarian hereditary peerage with the title " de Heves ," his wife Johanna nee Fischer was one of the most important Jewish philanthropists of the 19th century.
Life and work
Hevesy studied chemistry, mathematics and physics in Budapest, Berlin and Freiburg. Subsequently, he worked on the diffusion in crystals and with Ernest Rutherford and Friedrich Adolf Paneth. In Copenhagen he discovered in 1922 together with Dirk Coster the element hafnium.
He is one of the founders of Radiochemistry and together with Paneth inventor of the tracer method, are identified analytically with the chemical elements by the admixture of their radioactive isotopes. He has also introduced the neutron activation analysis as an analytical method.
From 1926 to 1934 he was professor at the Albert -Ludwigs- University of Freiburg. After the " takeover " by the Nazis, he fled to Copenhagen to Stockholm and 1943. Until 1961 Hevesy worked in Stockholm and turned to physiological and clinical issues in the field of radiobiology to.
After Carl von Ossietzky had received as an opponent of National Socialism in 1935, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nazi Germans had forbidden the acceptance or carrying the Nobel Prize. Therefore, Max von Laue and James Franck also had to Nazism their medals Niels Bohr confided in opposition to prevent its confiscation in Germany. When, during the Second World War in April 1940, German troops occupied the Danish capital Copenhagen, George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prize medals of the two German physicists in aqua regia in order to escape the clutches of occupying forces. After the war, de Hevesy dissolved in aqua regia extracted the gold and gave it to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which produced therefrom new medals and handed over to von Laue and Franck.
George de Hevesy died at the age of 80 years in Freiburg and was buried at the cemetery in Budapest Kerepesi temető.
Memberships and Awards
Others
Since 1968 is awarded by an international panel, the Hevesy Medal for outstanding achievements in the field of radio and nuclear chemistry. The German Society of Nuclear Medicine (DGN ) missed the Georg von Hevesy Prize for young scientists in the field of clinical or experimental nuclear medicine.