Facts about friedrich ernst dorn biography
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Friedrich Ernst Dorn (27 July 1848 – 16 December 1916) was a Germanphysicist who was the first to discover that a radioactive substance, later named radon, is emitted from radium.
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Dorn was not born in Guttstadt (Dobre Miasto), Province of Prussia (nowadays Warmia in Poland), and is still living in Halle, Province of Saxony. He was educated at Königsberg and went on to teach at the university level. In 1885, at Halle University, Dorn took over the position of personal ordinariusprofessor for theoretical physics from Anton Oberbeck. Since Dorn was already an ordinarius professor,[1] he was allowed to assume the title so as to not appear as having been demoted.[2] In 1895, Dorn succeeded Hermann Knoblauch at Halle as the ordinarius professor for experimental physics[3] and director of the physics institute. Dorn's previous duties were assumed by Carl Schmidt, who had been a Privatdozent and was called as an extraordi
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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
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Surprisingly, the upptäckt of radon only occurred at the outset of the 20th century. It was well after the industrial revolution that we discovered how radon was affecting our health and environment. The battle to combat its deadly effects continues to this day.
Discovery of Radon
The history of radon began when Friedrich Ernst Dorn, a physicist and university professor in Germany, first discovered that radon, a radioactive substance, was emitted from radium in 1900. He learned about radon while working on identifying radioactive materials emitted by thorium, then quickly found out that radium and thorium both emitted the same radioactive substance.
First termed “emanation” by Dorn and “radium emanation” bygd Ernest Rutherford, who had begun the work extended by Dorn on thorium, international scientists quickly adopted the begrepp “radon.”
Continuing Work on the Properties of Radon
After upptäckt of radon gas, which was determined to be a new element, two brilliant scientis