By EARL W. PHELAN
INTRODUCTION
History
The history of the use of radioisotopes for medical purposes is filled with names of Nobel Prize winners. It is inspiring to read how great minds attacked puzzling phenomena, worked out the theoretical and practical implications of what they observed, and were rewarded by the highest honor in science.
For example, in 1895 a German physicist, Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, noticed that certain crystals became luminescent when they were in the vicinity of a highly evacuated electric-discharge tube. Objects placed between the tube and the crystals screened out some of the invisible radiation that caused this effect, and he observed that the greater the density of the object so placed, the greater the screening effect. He called this new radiation X rays, because x was the standard algebraic symbol for an unknown quantity. His discovery won him the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901.
Wilhelm Roentgen
A French physicist, Antoine Henri Becquerel, newly appointed to the chair of physics at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, saw that this discovery opened up a new field for research and set to work on some of its ramifications. One of the evident features of the production of X rays was the fact that while they were being created, the glass of the vacuum tube gave off a greenish phosphorescent glow. This suggested to several physicists that substances which become phosphorescent upon exposure to visible light might give off X rays along with the phosphorescence.
Becquerel experimented with this by exposing various crystals to sunlight and then placing each of them on a black paper envelope enclosing an unexposed photographic plate. If any X rays were thus produced, he reasoned, they would penetrate the wrapping and create a developable spot of exposure on the plate. To his delight, he indeed observed just this effect when he used a phosphorescent material, uranium potassium sulfate. Then he made a confusing discovery. For several days there was no sunshine, so he could not expose the phosphorescent material. For no particular reason (other than that there was nothing else to do) Becquerel developed a plate that had been in contact with uranium material in a dark drawer, even though there had been no phosphorescence. The telltale black spot marking the position of the mineral nevertheless appeared on the developed plate! His conclusion was that uranium in its normal state gave off X rays or something similar.
