First communicated in Perspectives in Biology aud Medicine 

 Vol. I, No. 4, Summer 1C58 



A SCIENTIFIC CAREER 



George Hevesy, 



Ph.D. (hon.), Ph.nat.D. (lion.), D. Sc. (hon.), Sc. D. (hon.) M. D. (lion.) 



Jur. D. (hon.). 



I WAS born in Budapest the 1^* of August, 1885. After terminating 

 my studies at the Gymnasium of the Piarist Order in that city, I studied 

 a short time in Budapest and Berlin and later in Freiburg, mainly che- 

 mistry and physics, where I took my degree in 1908 an. The subject 

 of my doctoral thesis was the interaction between metallic sodium and 

 molten sodium hydroxide, an interaction responsible for a poor yield 

 often obtained when producing sodium by electrolysis of molten sodi- 

 um hydroxide. 



Being interested in high-temperature chemistry, I proceeded to Zurich 

 after obtaining my degree to work under Richard Lorenz, at that 

 time the most eminent representative of that branch of science. The 

 Technische Hochschule of Ziirich was in those days, as it is today, a 

 great place of learning and teaching. The Swiss chemical and pharma- 

 ceutical industry could not have reached its present high standard it 

 represents today without the aid of a great number of able chemists, 

 most of them trained at the Technische Hochschule of Ziirich. When 

 I joined this institution, the permanent head of the chemistry depart- 

 ment was Willstatter. 



Einstein's First Lecture 



Shortly after my arrival at Ziirich, Einstein was appointed associate 

 professor of theoretical physics on the University. I was one of the 

 audience of about twenty who attended his inaugural lecture on the 

 determination of the ratio of charge and mass of the electron. (Einstein 

 left after a few years for Prague and returned later to Ziirich to fill the 

 chair of theoretical physics on the Technische Hochschule.) When he 

 visited our laboratory,! had the privilege to show him around. I remember 

 vividly his astonishment w^hen shown a hydrogen electrode. He thought 

 such an electrode to be only a theoretical concept. 



Twenty-three years later, after terminating my Baker lectureship on 

 the Cornell University at Ithaca, I met Einstein in Pasadena. I visited a 



