Friedrich Paneth facts for kids

Friedrich Adolf Paneth (born August 31, 1887 – died September 17, 1958) was an important chemist. He was born in Austria but later became a British citizen. He left Germany in 1933 due to political changes and moved to Britain.

After World War II, Paneth returned to Germany. In 1953, he became the director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. He was known as the top expert on certain chemical compounds called hydrides. He also made big discoveries about the stratosphere, which is a layer of Earth's atmosphere.

Paneth's ideas helped create the official definition of a "chemical element". This definition is used by the IUPAC, a global group that sets rules for chemistry.

Early Life and Education

Friedrich Paneth, also known as Fritz, was born in Vienna, Austria. His father, Joseph Paneth, was a physiologist, a scientist who studies how living things work. Friedrich and his three brothers grew up in a Protestant family, even though their parents had Jewish backgrounds.

He went to a famous school in Vienna called the Schottengymnasium. Later, he studied chemistry at the University of Vienna. He also worked with another famous chemist, Adolf von Baeyer, at the University of Munich. In 1910, he earned his PhD from the University of Vienna.

Research and Career

After finishing his studies, Paneth decided to focus on a different area of chemistry. In 1912, he joined a group studying radiochemistry in Vienna. This field looks at radioactive elements.

In 1913, he visited two very famous scientists: Frederick Soddy in Glasgow and Ernest Rutherford in Manchester. That same year, he married Else Hartmann, and they had a son and a daughter.

Paneth became a professor at several German universities. He taught at the University of Hamburg starting in 1919. Then, he moved to Berlin University in 1922 and Königsberg University in 1929.

The Hydrogen-Helium Experiment

In 1927, Paneth and his colleague Kurt Peters published some interesting findings. They thought they had turned hydrogen into helium. This idea is now sometimes called cold fusion. However, they later realized their measurements were wrong. They found that the helium they detected actually came from the air around them. So, they took back their original claim.

Moving to Britain

In 1933, when Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany, Paneth was giving lectures in England. He decided not to go back to Germany because of the political situation. In 1939, he became a professor at the University of Durham in England. He stayed there until he retired in 1953.

Return to Germany

After retiring, Paneth was asked to become the director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. This invitation led him to return to Germany. He started a new department there called Cosmochemistry. This department focused on studying things from space, like meteorites. He continued to work at the institute until he passed away in 1958.

Awards and Recognition

Friedrich Paneth received many honors for his scientific work.

• He won the Lieben Prize in 1916.
• He received the Liversidge Award in 1936.
• He was given the Liebig Medal in 1957.

In 1947, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the United Kingdom.

Two things are named after him to remember his contributions:

• The mineral panethite
• A crater on the Moon called Paneth

See also

• Fajans–Paneth–Hahn Law