History
Harold Urey discovered the isotope deuterium in 1931 and was later able to concentrate it in water. Urey's mentor Gilbert Newton Lewis isolated the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis in 1933. George de Hevesy and Hoffer used heavy water in 1934 in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body. The history of large-quantity production and use of heavy water in early nuclear experiments is given below. Emilian Bratu and Otto Redlich studied the autodissociation of heavy water in 1934.
Read more about this topic: Heavy Water
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)