Scientific recency: George de Hevesy's Nobel-prize
Gabor Pallo
Institute for Philosophical Research
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Alfred Nobel's Will that serves as the constitution of the Nobel Foundation strictly determines the possible reasons for which a scientist can win the Nobel prize. It stipulates that a specific result achieved by individual scientists (not groups) can only be awarded, and one prize can be divided between maximum three persons. There was a point in the Will, however, that could not be kept. This is included into the first paragraph of the Code of Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, under the subtitle of Objects of the Foundation, which cites the relevant part of the Will. According to this point, the prizes will annually be awarded "to those persons who shall have contributed most materially to benefit mankind during the year immediately preceding." Indeed, this part of the Will apparently did not consider that practically it is almost impossible to judge all the merits of a scientific result achieved in "the year immediately preceding" of the decision. Recognizing this difficulty, the Statutes interprets this stipulation in this way: "'during the previous year' is to be so understood, that a piece of work or an invention for which reward under the terms of the Will is contemplated, shall set forth the most modern results of work being done in that of the departments, as defined in the Will, to which it belongs; works or inventions of older standing to be taken into consideration only in case their importance can be demonstrated."(1)
The long history of the chemist, George de Hevesy's Nobel prize may demonstrate that this interpretation of the Will made a way for awarding prizes for old results. Hevesy's story was not unprecedented. Herbert Hauptmann, for instance, received the 1985 chemistry prize thirty years after the first publication of his fundamental achievements in the field of crystallography(2) and the same happened to Barbara McClintock who was awarded by the medical prize in 1983 for her results in genetics achieved thirty years earlier. As the late arrival of a prize could sometimes happen, it seems worth scrutinizing a case of this kind in detail. The question is whether the reasons of such a long case lie in the work of the Nobel system or in the internal or external conditions of science.
Hevesy's prize is unique also because he was nominated many times for a long period of time without success. Between 1924 and 1944, he was nominated thirteen times by thirty-two nominators. Relying on the historic material of the Nobel archive, the whole process can be investigated step by step, though, for the rules of the Nobel system, the final station, namely, the results of the votes and the reasons of the decisions have not been recorded.
The career of George de Hevesy
Hevesy was born in 1885, in Budapest under the name of Bischitz, which, as it often happened in christianized Jewish families then, was changed to the Hungarian name of Hevesy in 1906.(3) His father, a successful businessman received nobleness from the Emperor, Franz Joseph in 1905. Though George de Hevesy began to study chemistry in the Budapest University, after the first year he decided to continue his studies in Germany, first in Berlin, then in Freiburg where he graduated and made his doctoral theses under the direction of the physical chemist Georg Meyer on the interaction between metallic sodium and molten sodium hydroxide.
Hevesy became assistant of Richard Lorenz in Zurich, then in 1910 joined Fritz Haber in Karlsruhe. His decisive years came when he chose to work with Ernst Rutherford in Manchester in 1911. In the leading laboratory of the radioactivity research, he could learn the latest ideas and laboratory techniques of the field and could make friends with the excellent experts working in the laboratory, including Niels Bohr, his closest friend throughout his life, and Henry G. J. Moseley, who worked out the methods of Roentgen spectroscopy. From the next year Hevesy began to commute between the most important European laboratories of his field spending extended times in Vienna, in the Institute für Radiumforschung directed by Stefan Meyer. Here Hevesy established a lifelong friendship with Fritz Paneth, with whom he started to work on radioactive isotopes. Meanwhile, as he shared most of his time between Vienna and Budapest, he obtained Habilitation in Budapest University to become a "privat dozent."
In the first World War, Hevesy, a Hungarian citizen, had to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army, then to stay in Budapest as it was not allowed to leave the country. In 1918 he was appointed extraordinary professor, in 1919 ordinary professor in the Budapest University but because he received this appointment during the period of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, after it was defeated, the university authorities falsely assumed that he collaborated with the communists and removed him from his post.
In 1920 Bohr invited Hevesy to become part of his new Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. Here he spent six happy years in the company of Bohr, I. Bronsted, A. Krogh and the Dutch Dirk Coster and many other colleagues who worked temporarily or for a longer period of time in the institute. Hevesy was mostly engaged in subjects belonging to physical and inorganic chemistry.
In 1926, when he was already a well-known chemist, he received an invitation to become professor in Freiburg University, which he did not want to refuse however happy he was in Copenhagen. Besides continuing his investigations in the field of geochemistry, physical chemistry and inorganic chemistry, Hevesy enlarged the building and laboratories of his institute (physical chemistry) and equipped them with modern instruments. After Hitler came to power Hevesy resigned his position by himself as, being a Hungarian citizen of Catholic religion, he was not dismissed.
He returned to Copenhagen to occupy his former position and became active in biological, biophysical and medical research. He reunited with Bohr and Krogh and started to cooperate with Swedish researchers, including Hans von Euler. His mobile lifestyle, his networking ability made him exceptionally efficient in many subjects.
The same abilities helped him to flee from Hitler again. He moved to Stockholm in 1943, where he settled down with his family but continued to travel and work in various laboratories with many colleagues.
Hevesy passed away in Freiburg in 1966.
The first nominations
Hevesy was first nominated for the chemistry Nobel prize in 1924 by three German scientists (F. Foerster, A. Heiduschka, and A. Lottermoser), and for a divided prize with Coster by another two (E. Müller and R. Scholl) all living in Dresden. They based their nomination on the discovery of a new chemical element: hafnium. On behalf of the Nobel committee, H. G. Söderbaum reported on the matter with the conclusion that "some results like the discovery of hafnium may achieve some popularity, yet it can be considered a self-evident (selbständige) discovery that is not worth of high appreciation as those based on research and therefore they should be crowned by a Nobel prize."(4)
This evaluation neglected the scientific context of the discovery that made it exceptionally significant. Hevesy's result was related to the placement of rare earth elements in the periodic table. The chemical properties and the atomic weights of these elements were found very similar which made questionable whether they should be placed into one common square in the table or to open a specific period for them. Finally, B. Brauner's (and some others) suggestion has generally been accepted, according to which the rare earth elements are placed in a single square occupied by lanthanum and they are listed in a row placed outside, normally below, the table. However, their number remained uncertain as in Brauner's time (the first years of the 20th century) it was assumed that not all of them became known. By X-ray spectroscopy Mosely could measure the atomic number of the elements, including the rare earths beginning with atomic number 57 (lanthanum) but he was hesitant whether the element number 72 is a rare earth or it already belongs to a main group in the periodic table.
Meanwhile, Georges Urbain, the foremost expert of rare earths, announced in 1911 that in a lutetium mineral he found a new element that he called celtium. He assumed that celtium should be the number 72 element. Mosely could not confirm this statement but he could not even falsify it because the sample he received seemed rather a composite than a distinct new element. By 1922, years after Moseley's untimely death, Urbain thought that because he gained a better sample of the celtium and the technique of X-ray spectroscopy had improved in the past years, he had a better chance to prove his result and repeated the measurement with his colleague, Alexandre Dauvillier. They found two faint lines in the spectrum which they considered as a clear sign of the presence of celtium. This result seemed convincing for the chemistry community.(5)
On the other hand, in the same year, Niels Bohr has worked out his theory on the electronic constitution of the elements, from which he concluded that the element number 72 cannot be a rare earth. In his theory, the properties of rare earths are determined by a subshell that becomes filled at the element number 71. Consequently, element number 72 should belong to the titanium group. Urbain's celtium, the nature of the 72 element was apparently a crucial problem for Bohr's theory: it could falsify it.
According to Hevesy's account, Bohr explained him this unpleasant situation before Bohr would have published his results which he planned to do in his Nobel-lecture. Hevesy, having been convinced by Bohr and knowing how uncertain the chemistry of rare earths was, started to look for the 72nd element in minerals entirely different from those used by Urbain. Urbain thought to have found celtium in minerals containing rare earths, while Hevesy in minerals containing zirconium, because in Bohr's theory the 72nd element should be a homologue of zirconium and not a rare earth. As the Dutch Dirk Coster, a young expert of X-ray spectroscopy was just setting up a modern X-ray spectroscope in the Bohr's institute, Hevesy asked for his help in analyzing a sample gained from a zirconium mineral that he received von Auer von Welsbach, Urbain's competitor in rare earth studies.(6)
Hevesy and Coster immediately received the crucial spectrum lines. Hevesy communicated the result in a telegram to Bohr who was already in Stockholm to receive the Nobel prize and who announced the discovery there. This dramatic flow of events made Hevesy and the new element, called hafnium, known worldwide.
This is why Hevesy was nominated to the Nobel prize in 1924. The underlying reason of the nominations was not just the discovery of a new element but also its theoretical relevance, as Foerster and Scholl emphasized in their nomination papers.(7) Yet, the chemistry committee decided clearly against it and not for another person or result: the 1924 chemistry prize remained reserved.
The reason to not awarding the prize to Hevesy could well be also political. Indeed, after the announcement of the discovery of hafnium a serious priority debate broke out which, though enhanced Hevesy's scientific reputation, caused some turmoil in the scientific community. Besides an Englishman, Alexander Scott, who claimed to find the element earlier than Hevesy and Coster but withdrew his claim when understanding its falsity, Urbain said that Hevesy and Coster only saw celtium in another mineral in a higher quantity than he previously did but they did not find a new element. The debate continued for years and divided the international chemistry community.(8)
On the inspiration of the debate Coster further developed the method of X-ray spectroscopy, while Hevesy worked out the chemistry of hafnium very fast. With collaborators, including Coster, he produced about 30 publications on hafnium chemistry in various languages.(9) He completed his intensive research on the subject by a book written on hafnium chemistry but he returned to it from time to time even in the late 1930s.(10) By this feverish work, Hevesy proved that the properties of hafnium are different from those of rare earths but close to zirconium and that celtium did not exist.
The unusually intensive priority debate impelled Bohr and Rutherford to play the role of the impartial juror by reading the proofs of the publications on the matter.(11) Historian Helge Kragh, when analyzing the priority debate made a distinction between the Hevesy, Coster party and the Urbain party according to the nations belonging to different camps in the first World War. Indeed, Hevesy, having served in the Austro-Hungarian Army, could be considered a representative of the Central Powers, while Coster, a Dutch who studied in Sweden and worked in Denmark, could also be suspected of pro-German feelings, because of these countries' orientation. From this perspective, French and British scientists could seem to belong to the Allies. This division of international scientific community was a serious matter for years after the War and it influenced international scientific communication.(12)
As regards to the Nobel nominations, Elisabeth Crawford pointed out that during the War and after the scientists nominated fellow scientists belonging to the same camp, Allied or Central Power, and this pattern changed only slightly in the period of "relative normalization" (1926-1933).(13) The fact that Hevesy had four German nominators and Urbain received four nominations in the same year from four French scientists confirm this statement. Moreover, in this case the two camps stood on the opposite sides in a sharp scientific controversy, which throws light on the difficulty of the decision to be made by the Nobel committee. It might seem easier to disregard the scientific context of the hafnium discovery than to make angry the Allied camp.
It could have been a good sign of detente that Hevesy's next nomination arrived in 1927 from a German and a French scientist. Le Blanc nominated him with Coster for hafnium, while Jean Perrin suggested a shared prize to Hevesy for hafnium and to Urbain for lutetium. Urbain had been nominated without success almost every year from 1912 till 1936 but only by French scientists, which underlines the compromising character of Perrin's suggestion.
Two years later, in 1929 Hevesy received five nominations from five German scientists: O. Hahn, W. Marckwald, F. Paneth, E. Tiede, W. Traube. Hahn suggested that Hevesy should be awarded either alone or with Coster. The radiochemist Marckwald wanted to share the prize between three people: Hevesy, Coster and Bohr -- all for the discovery of hafnium with emphasis on Hevesy's book. The Svedberg, who evaluated the nominations, referring to Söderbaum's earlier opinion, analyzed only the results achieved after 1924. In 1933 K. L. Wagner nominated Hevesy from Prague to share the prize with Coster and W. Noddack (together with I. Tacke, which, by the way, surpassed the limit of three persons) for discovering new elements of hafnium, masurium (which proved false) and rhenium.
Next year, in 1934 the German A. Hantzsch widened the basis of Hevesy's nomination. He pointed out that after finding hafnium, Hevesy made important contributions to radiochemistry and a number of other fields in inorganic chemistry, particularly, the chemistry of the vanadium group and of potassium and samarium. He used exact physical methods such as X-ray spectroscopy. In 1935, the Viennese H. Mark in his nomination referred to hafnium only as an example of Hevesy's substantial achievements characterized by "Anwendung physikalischer Methoden auf chemische Probleme."(14) By this, Mark stressed a radically new, large tendency gradually developed in the 20th century chemistry which could not be associated with one particular result. Hevesy was apparently one of the major early representatives of this style, but without naming one great achievement made by Hevesy, Mark's nomination could not be successful either.
The closing chapter of Hevesy's nomination for hafnium came about in 1936, when three mavericks of French science nominated him: F. Joliot, Iréne Joliot-Curie, J. Perrin. They all suggested dividing the prize between Urbain and Hevesy. However, Joliot and I. Curie, in their commonly signed nomination, referred to "leur travaux sur les terres rares et l'élément 72", showing that they wanted to close the old debate with a compromise and without recognizing that Urbain's result was false. Perrin, on the other hand, referred to hafnium only in Hevesy's nomination, and to lutetium in that of Urbain, also with the clear intention of a compromise.(15)
By that time, many years after the hafnium discovery and Bohr's theory, the matter might have seem too old. Twelve years elapsed after the first nominations and fifteen after the discovery. It could be considered "non-recent" then.
The second period of nominations
While Hevesy was nominated for hafnium several times and during a long period, another reason emerged in the nominations, besides hafnium. In 1929 F. Paneth and O. Hahn were the first who mentioned in their nominations Hevesy's works concerning the radioactive indicators as a reason for a possible Nobel prize. Paneth wrote that "neben der Entdeckung des Hafniums besonders auch seine Untersuchungen unter Verwendung der Radioelemente als 'Indikatoren', und seine partielle Isotopen-Trennung." According to Hahn, "In Gemeinschaft mit Paneth verdanken wir ihm die Verwendung 'radioaktiver Indikatoren' für das Studium der Eigenschaften chemischer Elemente in extremen Verdünnungen."(16)
As far as recency is concerned, in fact, Hevesy worked out the method of 'radioactive indicators' sooner than he had found hafnium. The origin of the discovery goes back to 1911, when Rutherford asked Hevesy in Manchester to isolate the radioactive radium D from the inactive lead. In the following months Hevesy tried all the known analytical methods to separate the two substances but he failed. At the end of 1912, while commuting between Budapest and Vienna, Hevesy met and began to cooperate with the young physicochemist, Fritz Paneth in the Viennese Istitute für Radiumforschung but their common efforts to separate the two components also failed. Then Hevesy turned the logic around: if the active radium D is inseparable from lead, then he should mix radium D with lead so that the lead content of a material could be shown by the radioactive radiation of radium D.(17) Hevesy and Paneth published their first paper on the method in Vienna,(18) later in a leading German journal.(19)
Paneth, the collaborator, and Hahn, the radiochemist probably noticed the practical implications of the new method by which Hevesy could soon achieve some very interesting results.(20) The theoretical context was not less relevant. It was related to the growing number of elements resulted in the radioactive decay. The existence of the new elements raised two questions: 1) what was the genetic relationship between these elements and 2) how is it possible to place them in the Mendeleev table?
These questions were answered in the same year as Hevesy and Paneth worked out the method of radioactive indicators. The group displacement law, which threw light on the genetic relationship between the radioactive substances, developed gradually trough the researches done by Hevesy, Fleck, Russell, Fajans and Soddy but was clearly formulated by the latter two. This law established relationship between the type of radiation emitted by a given radioactive element and the product of the decay. As far as the second question was concerned, the difficulty in finding the place of the new elements in the periodic table lay in the fact that the number of the new elements was higher then that of the empty squares in the table. Therefore, and for their chemical properties, they had to be placed in squares which had already been occupied by other elements. By this, the meaning of a fundamental term of chemistry, the term of 'element', became uncertain, because the most important feature of 'element' was its individuality defined by the place it occupied in the periodic table. One place was occupied by one element which had one particular atomic weight and some well defined chemical properties. If substances with different atomic weights could be placed in the same square, what does the term 'element' mean? This problem was solved by the introduction of a new term: 'isotopy', meaning that the elements are mixtures of isotopes that are bodies with identical chemical properties but different atomic weights. The term was coined by F. Soddy also in 1913.(21)
In their work on radioactive indicators, Hevesy and Paneth implied that radium D and lead are the same elements differing only in their radioactivity which meant that they were isotopes though neither the term nor the name existed when they worked out the method. Consequently, the method, besides its significance in laboratory practice, was relevant also from theoretical point of view.
As the years went by, in the Nobel nominations the nominators mentioned the radioactive indicator method more often. At the beginning they used it for emphasizing Hevesy's merits in science, as if they wanted to convince the committee that Hevesy deserved the prize also for other reasons besides hafnium. This intention can be seen in A. Hantzsch 1934 nomination when saying that "auch für die Theorie der Isotopen besonders wichtige Blei wird von v. Hevesy behandelt" and mentioning "radiochemische Indikatoren." Among the 1936 nominations, when the leading French scientists reasoned their nominations by hafnium, in the fourth nomination of the same year, the Viennese A. von Eiselsberg mentioned Hevesy's results concerning isotopy, namely, the separation of isotopes.(22) Characteristically, one year earlier, in his 1935 nomination, H. Mark stressed that Hevesy with Paneth had worked out the radioactive indicator method 20 years before.
Indeed, while the hafnium discovery might have seemed out of date, the much earlier born radioactive indicators appeared recent to the nominators. In the 1939 nominations hafnium did not play any role, while all nominators referred to the isotope indicators. Two of the nominations arrived from Hevesy's old Budapest colleagues (J. Gróh and T. Széky), the third from Niels Bohr and the fourth from F. Soddy who nominated Hevesy with Paneth. All of them stressed the method's wide range applications, which were primarily introduced by Hevesy. The original theoretical context did not appear very important for the nominators 26 years after the discovery, yet the discovery seemed recent to them.
The reason of the new recency was that in the early 1930s, some, in 1913, unforeseeable results opened the way for the exploitation of the radioactive indicators. In 1932 H. Urey found the heavy isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, which could be used for biological experiments; also in 1932, J. Chadwick showed the neutron; and in 1934 Fréderic Joliot and Irene Curie discovered artificial radioactivity. The Svedberg in his 1939 evaluation report gave an overview of the history of radioactive indicators and divided it into two periods. In the first one, 1913-1925, it was mostly used for solving some inorganic and physical chemistry problems. Hevesy began to apply this method in the field of biology in 1923 but as the radioactive isotopes at his disposal, being heavy metals, were poisonous for living organisms, he put this direction of research aside.(23) By the end of the second period, 1925-1935, according to Svedberg, the biological and medical applications became prevalent. Hevesy, exploiting the newly found artificial radioactivity, started to use light isotopes, which had no danger to the living organism, to investigate biological and medical processes. In the same way as with the radioactive indicators, he mixed the active isotopes of an element (first phosphor) with its inactive form to trace the element in its route through the organism.(24) Before this, he applied deuterium as a tracer but active isotopes proved more useful.(25)
In spite of these arguments, Kuhn, Butenandt and Ruzicka shared the 1939 chemistry prize and Hevesy was left out again.
Difficult arrival
The medical and biological application of the tracers loaned new recency to Hevesy's method. In 1940, his Nobel case gained a decisive turn. Hevesy had three nominators this year. The British F. W. Aston referred to "the wonderful development, largely by Hevesy himself, of the method of Isotopic Indicators of which he was the brilliant pioneer" and added that "his discovery of Hafnium deserved much greater international recognition than it received at the time." The other two nominators were Swedes, W. Palmear and The Svedberg submitting very short notices referring to the radioactive indicators. They both were members of the Nobel committee.
The Svedberg's nomination could be all the more significant as he made the evaluation again. One year earlier he wrote four pages, now 14 pages with a very detailed history of the origin and development of the method. In his analysis Svedberg added a new period of 1935-1940 to the report he wrote a year earlier. He accounted of the worldwide activity done in various fields with the help of Hevesy's method and proved that he was not only the creator but also the most successful innovator of applications in many fields.(26) Now, the committee voted for Hevesy against the 15 nominees, including G. N. Lewis, L. Pauling, R. Robinson and C. K. Ingold, and all the five members of the committee signed the decision on 2 September, 1940. In harmony with the usual procedure, the secretariat of the Academy of Science gathered to discuss (normally accept) the suggestion of the committee but now something unusual happened. The ten members, including Svedberg, Palmaer and v. Euler, Hevesy's close colleague, concluded on 25 October that though Hevesy won the 1940 chemistry prize for his works with the radioactive indicators, the prize will not be awarded to him because the Academy decided on 11 October that it will reserve the physics, chemistry and literature prizes this year.(27)
In this way, Hevesy won the highest scientific distinction sixteen years after his first nomination but it was in vain as politics prevented him from being really awarded. The reason of reservation had nothing to do with Hevesy's scientific reputation, rather to the political circumstances again, in particular, to the waybehavior the Nobel institution behaved toward Nazism.
First, the Nobel institution bravely awarded the 1936 peace prize to Carl von Ossietzky, a German left-wing, pacifist journalist who was interned in a camp for his political views. The prize was widely considered as protest against the Nazi encroachment. Hitler reacted angrily. He strictly prohibited the German scientists to accept any Nobel-prizes or to nominate anybody for a prize. The German scientists could not help but comply. Richard Kuhn in 1938, Adolf Butenandt in 1939 refused to receive the chemistry prize, while Gerhadt Domagk, also in 1939, the medical prize. (Yet, after the war they received the diploma and the medal but not the check.) This forced refusal of receiving the prize by the winners influenced the prize-awarding institutions and the Nobel Foundation so much that it decided to cancel the prizes in 1940.(28) Hevesy's prize became a victim of Nazism.
The Nobel machinery, however, continued to work normally. The nomination and evaluation process, the ranking of the nominees proceeded as usually. In 1941, the nominations arrived as if nothing happened in the outside world. Besides Hevesy, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were also on the list of nominees containing 17 names, including G. N. Lewis, L. Pauling or H. Staudinger and others. Harold Urey nominated Hevesy with Rudolph Schönheimer, another pioneer of tracers. This year O. Hahn gained the first position on the list of the candidates but the chemistry committee stressed that Hevesy, the 1940 winner should first be awarded, but it was also noticed that "pris reserveras till följande år," meaning that it was withheld again.(29) Next year Rudolph Ortvay, Hungarian theoretical physicist, nominated Hevesy for the physics prize, and A. Krogh, with a long detailed reasoning, for the chemistry prize. The chemistry committee had 20 candidates in that year but the decision about Hevesy was the same as in the previous year.(30)
The situation changed in 1943. Now the Italian Luigi Rolla nominated Hevesy in a long letter which went back to the first experiments with the radioactive indicators in 1913, then the letter detailed the early attempts at using them in scientific investigations that extended in the 1930s to the medical and biological applications. The committee, with the notice that it considered Hevesy's indicator method worth to the prize in 1940 and this opinion did not change in 1941 and 1942, asked Svedberg to supplement his previous investigation with the developments of the last three years. In his new report Svedberg concluded that Hevesy still occupied the first place on the list of candidates. Nevertheless, in the Nobel meeting of the secretariat of the chemistry section of the Academy decided that it agreed with the proposal of the committee on Hevesy's prize but the prize will only be awarded next year, because of the uncertain international circumstances. Now Hevesy won the prize again but he had to wait for the ceremony for another year.(31)
The prize-awarding institutions did not stop working after this decision either. In 1944 new nominations arrived and, among the 26 nominees, including Hahn, Hevesy was nominated again by two of his colleagues: the Norwegian W. M. Goldschmidt and L. Mazza, Genova, Italy. Both argued with the radioactive indicator method and its old and new applications but they also mentioned hafnium. The events continued according to the usual scenario. The Svedberg added to his 1940 and 1943 evaluations a supplementary report of about three pages on the latest development of the field. He concluded that Hevesy is the first among the candidates.(32)
This time the chemistry committee fell into an unusual situation. Relying on Svedberg's earlier proposals, Hevesy won the chemistry prize in 1940 and 1943 but relying on another committee member, A. Westgren's proposal, which supported Hahn and Lise Meitner, these latter scientists would have to be awarded also.(33) The decision was logical: the committee proposed that Hevesy be warded by the 1943, while Hahn the 1944 prize.(34)
Hevesy arrived at the same stage already in 1940. The next stage was the Nobel meeting of the secretariat of the chemistry section of the Academy which was held on 18 October, 1944. It decided to suggest to the Academy that Hevesy won the 1943 and Hahn the 1944 chemistry prize, and because Hevesy's prize was reserved in the previous year, it should be awarded in 1944, while Hahn's prize should be reserved until the following year.(35)
The final decision of the Academy in the matter of Hevesy's prize was made on the Nobel meeting held 9 November, 1944. Here the Academy decided to present the reserved 1943 prizes and the 1944 prizes but, unlike in physics and medicine, the 1944 chemistry prize was reserved (probably because Hitler's prohibition was still alive) and Hahn received his prize in 1945. This was really the end of Hevesy's long journey to the Swedish Academy where his prize was handed over by the President of the Academy in a modest meeting because the usual ceremony was considered improper in war times. Physically the journey was quite short since Hevesy already lived in Stockholm.
The reason of the award was "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes." By that time the isotopic tracer method spread all around the world, including the United States where the production of isotopes by accelerators was at the highest level. Hevesy was considered as a founding father of a commonly used technique, which was and remained recent as a standard method in many kinds of investigations inside and outside science.
Concluding remarks
The twenty years long story of Hevesy's Nobel prize proved that some scientific results could be considered very relevant at the time it has been achieved and later this relevance fades by new directions in science. The contrary could also happen just to prove how difficult it is to define recency in science. The discovery of hafnium confirmed Bohr's theory on the constitution of atoms, which was the latest and most important word in the matter in the 1910s, early 20s and its heuristic value remained very significant in chemistry well in the age of quantum chemistry. Yet, as time went by, hafnium became just a chemical element with not particularly wide applications. Its historic significance had been recorded in chemistry textbooks rather as a remarkably colorful paragraph than a most important chapter of recent knowledge. It seems as if history justified Söderbaum's judgement that might appear narrow minded when it was put.
From Hevesy's career point of view hafnium was a turning point which made him world famous. For him the Nobel prize in the 1920s could surely have been something as a great recognition of his efforts in a bitter controversy and an elevation to the scientific elite in his forties. According to his collaborator and biographer, Hilde Levi, Hevesy was very much disappointed by the repeated negative decision of the Nobel institution while the repeated nominations proved the recognition he enjoyed in the chemistry comminity.(36)
On the other hand, the method of the radioactive indicators was less recent when it began to be mentioned in the nomination letters. First it gained recency not so much from the theoretical context rather from the ever widening practical usage, particularly, in the biological and medical fields.
Besides the internal factors, the story of Hevesy's Nobel prize was largely influenced by international politics. It is dubitable whether the positivistic negligence of theoretical relevance or the political opportunism urged the prize-awarding institutions to disregard the theoretical significance of both the hafnium and the radioactive indicator method discovery. When they decided in favor of Hevesy, he was already a most renown expert in many fields of science and it was Nazism that dragged this matter on for years.
In any case, by the time Hevesy received the Nobel prize his disappointment reached the level that he considered other prizes more valuable than the Nobel prize. He said that the Copley medal of the British Royal Society was more important because it was awarded only to very few non-British scientists, while there were so many Nobel prize winners.(37)
Notes
1. 1. The Will and the Statutes can be read on the Nobel web site: <www.nobel.se>. On the problem of "recency" see Elisabeth Crawford, The Beginning of the Nobel Institution: The Science Prizes, 1901-1915, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1984), 161-164.
2. 2. The case is analyzed in István Hargittay's interview with Herbert Hauptmann, Chemical Intelligencer, 4: 1998, Nr. 1. Pp. 11-17.
3. 3. About Hevesy's biography see: G. Hevesy, "A Scientific Career," Collected Papers (London: Pergamon Press, 1962), -- J.
D. Cockroft, "George de Hevesy 1885-1966", Biogr. Mem.of Fell. of Roy. Soc. (1967) 125-166. -- H. Levi, George de
Hevesy: Life and Work (Copenhagen: Rhodos, 1985) -- Marx Gyorgy (ed), George de Hevesy 1885-1966. Festschrift.
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiado 1988) - G. Pallo, Hevesy György, (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1998).
4. 4. Evaluation by H. G. Söderbaum, 5. maj 1924. Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (ARSA).
5. About the history of rare earths see Ferenc Szabadváry, "The history of the discovery and separation of the rare earths" In:
K. A. Gschneidner, Jr., L. Eyring (eds), Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths, Vol. 11. (Elsevier Science
Publishers B. V., 1988) pp. 33-80.
6. This story can be read in all biographical accounts cited in note 3.
7. See the nomination letters for the 1924 chemistry prize, ARSA
8. The debate with references to the printed and non printed sources have been described by Helge Kragh, "Anatomy of a
priority conflict: The case of element 72," Centaurus, 23:1980, pp. 275-301.
9. The papers are listed in Hevesy's bibliography published at the end of Hilde Levi's book. See note 3.
10. G. Hevesy, Das Element Hafnium (Berlin: Springer, 1927).
11. Hevesy wrote about this situation to a Hungarian colleague, Rudolf Ortvay, physicist: " Bohr takes part in the edition of
the papers and Rutherford corrects the proofs. It is very reassuring that the whole correspondence goes through the hands of
the two greatest scientists of our time." (25 February 1923.) Hevesy György levelei Ortvay Rudolfnak (G. Hevesy's letters to
R. Ortvay), Ed.. G. Pallo, Fizikai Szemle, 27: 1977, pp. 69-80.
12. About the situation and the American reactions to it see, D. Kevles, "'Into hostile camps': The reorganization of
international science in World War I," Isis, 62:1971, 47-60.
13. Elisabeth Crawford, Nationalism and Internationalism in Science, 1880-1939: Four Studies of the Nobel Population,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 64-78.
14. H. Mark's nomination to Hevesy 27 December, 1927. ARSA
15. F. Joliot, Iréne Curie and Jean Perrin's nominations to Hevesy, 1936. Perrin wrote: "Je sais que ces deux savants ont eu
l'un avec l'autre de violentes polémiques: ils n'en ont pas moins, en définition, collaboré efficacément des progrés de la
Chimie, et je trouvérai élégant qu'ils soient en méme temps récomposés par vous." ARSA. According to Hevesy's memoirs,
the three French scientists met some resentment in the French Academic circles because of their actions. See. G. Hevesy
16. F. Paneth and O. Hahn's nominations to Hevesy, 1929, ARSA
17. This simplified story has been published in all biographies mentioned in note 3.
18. F. Paneth, G. Hevesy: "Über Versuche zur Trennung des radium D von Blei," Mitt. Inst. f. Radiumf. In der Sitzung am 24. apr. 1913. Monatschr. F. Chem. u. verw. anderer Wiss. Wienna. 34. 1913. 1393.
19. G. Hevesy, F. Paneth, "Die Löslichkeit des Bleisulfids und Bleichromats (RaD)," Z. anorg. Chem. 82:1913, 323., G.Hevesy - F.Paneth: "RaD als "Indikator" des Bleis," Z. anorg. Chem. 82:1913. 322.
20. G. Hevesy, J. Gróh, "Die Selbstdiffusionsgeschiwindigkeit des geschmolzenen Bleis," Ann. d. Phys. 63:192O, 85. - "Die Selbstdiffusionsgeschwindigkeit in festem Blei," Ann. d. Phys. 65:1921, 216. , G. Hevesy, L. Zechmeister, "Über den intramolekularen Platzwechsel gleichartiger Atome," Ber. Dt. Chem. Ges. 53:1920, 410.
21. The details of the story can be read in: T. J. Trenn (ed), Radioactivity and atomic theory: facsimile reproduction of (F.Soddy,s) annual progress reports on radioactivity from 19O4. to 192O, (London: Taylor and Francis, 1975) isotopy: p. 333.
22. A. Hantzsch and A. von Eiselsberg nominations to Hevesy, 1934 and 1936, ARSA
23. The first published paper was this: G. Hevesy, "The absorption and translocation of lead by plants," Biochem. J., 17:1923, 439.
24. Here are some of the first publications: G. Hevesy, O.Chiewitz, "Radioactive indicators in the study of phosphorus metabolism in rats," Nature 136:1935, 754., G. Hevesy, K. Linderstrom-Land, C. Colsen, "Atomic dynamics of plant growth," Nature, 137:1936, 66., G. Hevesy, J. Holst, A, Krogh, "Investigation on the exchange of phosphorus in teeth using radioactive phosphorus as indicator, " Kgl. Danske Vidensk. Selsk. Biol. Medd. 13:1937 13.
25. See G. Hevesy, E. Hofer, "Elimination of water from the human body," Nature, 134:1934, 879.
"Diplogen and fish," Nature, 133: 1934, 495., "Der Austausch des Wassers im. Fischkörper, "
Hoppe-Seyler Z. 225:1934, 28., G. Hevesy, E. Hofer, A. Krogh, "The permeability of the skin of
frogs to water, as determined by D2O and H2O," Scand. Arch. Physiol. 72:1935, 199.
26. The Svedberg's evaluation to Hevesy's nomination, 1940. ARSA
27. See the archival documents of the 1940 chemistry prize. ARSA
28. See Elisabeth Crawford, "German scientists and Hitler's vendetta against the Nobel prizes," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 31:2000, 37-53.
29. Documents of the 1941 chemistry prize. ARSA
30. Documents of the 1942 chemistry prize. ARSA
31. Documents of the1943 chemistry prize. ARSA
32. Goldschmidt and Mazza's nominations and Svedberg's evaluation to Hevesy's matter, 1944. ARSA
33. This is a part of the largely debated story of O. Hahn's Nobel-prize which was mistakenly unshared with at least Lise Meitner but possibly with Srassmann also. E. Crawford, R. Sime, M. Walker, "A Nobel tale of postwar injustice," Physics Today, 1977 September, 26-32., R. Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 326-346.
34. The decision was signed by the five members of committee on 11 September, 1944. Documents of the 1944 chemistry prize. ARSA
35. The protocol of the secretariat meeting in the documents of the1944chemistry prize, ARSA
36. H. Levi, note 3. p. 56.
37. See. H. Levi, ibid. p. 56.