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Friedrich Adolf PanethGerman chemist and geochemist
Date of Birth: 31.08.1887
Country:  Austria |
Content:
Biography of Friedrich Adolf Paneth
Friedrich Adolf Paneth, a German chemist and geochemist, was born on August 31, 1887 in Vienna. He studied at the universities of Munich, Glasgow, and Vienna, and obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1910. From 1912 to 1918, he worked at the Radium Institute in Vienna and taught at the Prague Institute of Technology. Starting from 1913, he taught and worked at various universities including Manchester, Berlin, Hamburg, the University of Glasgow, and Königsberg.
Emigration to England
After the Nazis came to power, Paneth emigrated to England. From 1933 to 1938, he taught at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. In the years 1943-1945, Paneth led the chemical department of the Joint British-Canadian Atomic Energy Commission in Montreal. Since 1953, he served as the director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.
Major Contributions
Paneth's main works focused on radiochemistry and inorganic chemistry. In 1913, together with D. Hevesy, Paneth proposed the method of radioactive tracers (the method of tagged atoms). In the same year, jointly with K. Fajans, he formulated the rule of radioactive element coprecipitation from solutions (the Paneth-Fajans rule). From 1917 to 1929, Paneth developed a precision method for determining trace amounts of helium. As a result of these studies, he was the first to establish the absolute age of meteorites and rocks. Paneth continued his research on meteorites until the end of his life.
