Abstract
AT the beginning of this century, one of the facts most intriguing to chemists was the impossibility of concentrating some of the radioactive elements. Radium D, for example, a substance well characterized by its radioactive properties, proved to be completely inseparable from the large quantities of lead with which it was always burdened when extracted from minerals. Early in 1913 it was realized that the strange inseparability observed in radiochemistry, and the atomistic complexity of inactive elements as revealed by mass spectroscopy, were aspects of one and the same phenomenon, for which the new Rutherford-Bohr theory of the atom provided a convincing explanation. But even before this recognition of the nature and importance of ‘isotopy', attempts had been made to turn the negative results of the separation experiments into a positive service to science : the solubility of sparingly soluble lead salts was determined by mixing them with radium D and using the imparted radioactivity for the electroscopic measurement of the invisibly small quantities of dissolved lead.
Radioactive Tracers in Biology
An Introduction to Tracer Methodology . By Prof. Martin D. Kamen. (Organic and Biological Chemistry, a Series of Monographs, Vol. 1.) Pp. xiii + 281. (New York : Academic Press, Inc.; London : H. K. Lewis and Co., Ltd., 1947.) 5.80 dollars.
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PANETH, F. Radioactive Tracers in Biology. Nature 161, 456 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161456a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161456a0