Paneth, Friedrich Adolf (1887–1958)

Austrian chemist who contributed to the development of radioactive tracer techniques. He worked on unstable metal hydrides and developed sensitive methods for determining trace amounts of helium. From 1929 to the end of his life, meteorites dominated his interests.

Paneth was born in Vienna. He studied and worked at a number of European institutions, including the university of Glasgow, the Vienna Institute for Radium Research, and the Prague Institute of Technology. In 1929 he became professor at Königsberg, but left Germany for the UK in 1933 because of the rise of the Nazis. He was professor at Durham 1939–53, and during World War II he was head of the chemical division of the Joint British and Canadian Atomic Energy Team in Montréal. In 1953 Paneth returned to Germany to become director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.

Paneth worked out that radium D and thorium B are isotopes of lead and that radium E and thorium C are isotopes of bismuth. He prepared a new tin hydride, SnH4, and investigated its properties.

In the late 1930s Paneth succeeded in obtaining measurable amounts of helium by the neutron bombardment of boron: he had induced an artificial transmutation. He then began to investigate the trace elements in the stratosphere, and determined the helium, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide content of the atmosphere.