Friedrich Oskar Giesel
| Friedrich Oskar Giesel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
20 May 1852 Winzig, Germany |
| Died | 13 November 1927 (aged 75) Braunschweig Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Fields | radiochemistry |
| Known for | discovery of actinium |
Friedrich Oskar Giesel (20 May 1852 – 13 November 1927, known as Fritz) was a German organic chemist. During his work in a quinine factory in the late 1890s he started to work on the at-that-time-new field of radiochemistry and started the production of radium. In the period between 1902 and 1904 he was able to isolate a new element emanium. In a now controversially reviewed process it was stated that emanium is identical to actinium, which was discovered by André-Louis Debierne in 1899.
After studying in Berlin with Carl Liebermann he received his Ph.D at the University of Göttingen. Giesel worked at the Chininfabrik Braunschweig. Besides his work in the factory, Giesel's focus was on radiochemistry. Shortly after publication of the discovery of polonium in the summer of 1898, he started to isolate the new element from the waste of uranium production in the chemical plant E. de Haën in Hanover. By March 1899 he could present the first radium to the chemical society of Braunschweig and by mid-1899 he published his results on radium. Giesel improved the separation of radium from barium by using the bromides instead of the chlorides for the fractional crystallization. He produced large quantities of pure radium and polonium for commercial applications from uranium ore. Even William Ramsay and Frederick Soddy were buying radium from the factory of Giesel.
What I have since dubbed the Isenthal 'manna' was in fact the first consignment of pure radium compounds that Giesel of the Chinin Fabrik of Brunswick was putting on the market and the price I paid for it was about eight shillings a milligram of radium bromide (50 per cent pure radium).
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