Friedrich ernst dorn biography template
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Initial Discovery
In order to detect radioactive gas a person either needs advanced equipment or careful insamling. In the year 1900, a scientist by the name of Friedrich Ernst Dorn was able to record radioactive emissions from a sample of radium compounds he was working with. Before that, in 1899, Pierre and Marie Curie had also taken note of a similar reaction. Further research by other scientists led to a deeper understanding of radon which continues to this day.
Understanding Radon
It wasn’t until the late 20th century that researchers in the United States started to take the dangers of this substance seriously. The threat of the Cold War deepened the need for understanding radiation, which led to a study of radiation levels across the country. It was funnen that the nation’s Southwest regions experienced high levels of radiation, and that miners were especially affected. Ventilation systems were laid out in mines, while detection devices began to be used in home
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Radon
About Radon
Radon is a radioactive noble gas that occurs naturally on earth as a decay product of uranium and thorium deposits. The initial discovery of this element has variously been credited to Pierre and Marie Curie, who in 1899 noted that gas emitted by the previously discovered element radium remained active for some time, Friedrich Ernst Dorn, who noted the same phenomenon in 1900, Ernest Rutherford, who observed radioactive gas being emitted by thorium samples in 1901, and Andre-Louis Debierne, who observed radioactive gas emitted by actinium in 1903. Initially the gases emitted by each separate element were given different names, but it was eventually recognized that all three were merely different isotopes of a single new element of the noble gas family.
This new element was extensively characterised by Sir William Ramsay and Robert Whytlaw-Gray in 1910, and was later given the single element name “radon” accompanied by isotope numbers in place of the sepa
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Scientist of the Day - Friedrich Dorn
Portrait of Friedrich Dorn, long thought to be the discoverer of radon, photograph, no date (Wikimedia commons)
Friedrich Ernst Dorn, a German physicist, was born July 27, 1848. Dorn taught experimental physics at Halle, and his life and career, while distinguished, was not especially noteworthy. He is remembered primarily for a discovery that, it turns out, he did not make.
It is curious how historical errors can linger on in the literature. The most notorious example is the oft-repeated statement that people at the time of Columbus believed that the Earth is flat, and that his sailors feared falling off the edge of the Earth. It has been demonstrated numerous times that while one can find a few instances in early medieval Europe of individuals advocating a flat Earth, by the later medieval period it was universally understood that the Earth is a sphere and, moreover, that one can prove this from facts derived from sailing and