Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

Lajos Ilosvay, became head of the Department of General Chemistry, at the Technical University Budapest, in 1882, and remained in this position for 52 years, presumably a world record of professorship. Bosvay made his name famous by his method for detecting nitrite and nitrate. This was the first selective reagent in analytical chemistry. Vince Wartha first professor of chemical technology and his pupil and successor Ignác Pfeifer, in 1895, developed a method for water hardness determination and treatment by means of a solution mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate. This method remained in almost exclusive use. In 1878 Ronald Eötvös proposed fris law of molecular surface tension found in even the most elementary textbooks of physical chemistry Pál Szily is an undeservedly forgotten personage. He was the first to develop a colorimetric procedure utilizing indicators for determining hydrogen ion concentration. To increase accuracy of his method, he proposed to prepare solutions with known hydrogen ion concentration by mixing primary and secondary phosphates in varying proportions. Hence it was Szily who introduced buffer solutions indispensable up to the present for pH measurements. At present, his solutions are mentioned in the literature as Sörensen's buffer solutions. However, Sörensen himself wrote in 1908, in his paper proposing the denomination pH about Szily's buffer solutions as follows: ,J5riedenthal und Salm haben nach dem Vorschlage von Szily Phosphatmischungen als Vergleichsflüssigkeiten gebraucht. Selbstverständlich beabsichtige ich nicht die Priorität dieser ausgezeichneten Forscher zu bestreiten." Just before World War I, in 1913, György Hevesy, together with Fritz Paneth, invented the radioindication method, the basis of aü radioactive labelling methods. This work was performed in Vienna, as the result of an unaccomplishable task set to young Hevesy by Rutherford, his principal, namely to separate radium-D from accompanying lead in uranium ore. Hevesy realized that izotopes cannot be separatated by chemical means, and concluded that radioisotopes can be used for labelling inactive elements: „Das vierte Zerfallsprodukt der Radiumemanation, das Ra-D zeigt bekanntlich alle chemischen Reaktionen des Bleis, vermengt man das Ra-D mit Bleisalzen, so lässt sich ersteres vom Blei durch kerne chemische oder physikalische Methode trennen und wenn einmal die vollständige Vermischung der beiden Stoffe stattgefunden hat, bleibt das selbe Konzentrationsverhältnis auch für beliebig kleine Mengen Blei, die man der Lösung, entnimmt, bestehen. Da Ra-D infolge semer Aktivität in unvergleichlich viel geringeren Mengen bestimmt werden kann als Blei, so kann es zum qualitativen und quantitativen Nachweis des Bleis, dem es zugefügt wurde, dienen, das Ra-D wird zum Indikator des Bleis...". As long as only a few natural radioisotopes were at disposal, labelling was a sort of curiosity rather than an analytical method. However, after artificial radioisotopes became accessible, labelling gained outstanding importance in practicaUy all branches of science and technology. Hevesy's discovery was ahead of his time. This brought about the unusual situation that was awarded the Nobel prize for his method only 30 years after its invention, in 1944. However, this was the case with almost aU of his inventions. Hevesy was forced, by politics, to almost constant peregrination, and he could never settle down for a longer period as head of a university department. He made his discoveries in six countries. Sci-