Prima Donna No. 2

Heavy hydrogen was king of the meeting of the American Chemical Society in St. Petersburg, Fla. last week. Its discoverer, Dr. Harold Clayton Urey of Columbia University, opened a heavy hydrogen symposium with a review of its history before 700 members.

Three years ago Professor Fred Allison of Alabama Polytechnic Institute was studying various elements by the magneto-optic method when he got unexpected results which led him to suspect the existence of a hydrogen isotope whose nucleus was twice as heavy as that of ordinary hydrogen. Not long afterward Dr. Urey and two associates concentrated enough of the isotope to identify it. He estimated that heavy hydrogen was present in ordinary hydrogen gas to the extent of about one part in 4,000. He named the new isotope deuterium.

Prima donna of chemistry, hydrogen is present in 300,000 known compounds. Deuterium promised to be a twin prima donna capable of producing 300,000 new compounds. Commonest hydrogen compound is hydrogen oxide--water. First and most obvious heavy hydrogen compound is deuterium oxide--heavy water. In fact this looks like ordinary water and is only 10 percent heavier.

Edward Wight Washburn, chief chemist of the U. S. Bureau of Standards until his recent death, showed how electrolysis could be used to get a fairly high conce tration of heavy water. Dean of Chemistry Gilbert Newton Lewis of the University of California later devised a series of electrolyses to produce almost pure heavy water. At Princeton, Dr. Hugh S. Taylor made three ounces of heavy water whose density could not be increased by repeated refinements, concluded he had pure deuterium oxide. Meanwhile heavy water's first fabulous cost of $150 per gram (about $37,500 for a glassful) was tumbling. By his "cascade" process which Dr. Urey last week described, 38 grams of 92 percent pure heavy water was obtained in 72 hours at a cost of $15 per gram. By summer Princeton expects to have from 12 to 15 lb. at a cost of $5 per gram.

With decreasing costs scores of laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic began to make heavy water and experiment with it. Heavy water was found to kill guppy fish, tadpoles, flatworms. Dean Lewis reported that tobacco seeds immersed in it failed to sprout. He gave some to a mouse, watched the creature prance tipsily about its cage, lick the glass walls, develop a great thirst. Heavy water in low concentrations (but higher than in ordinary water) was found in the sap and wood of willow trees, in the Dead Sea, in Great Salt Lake. European experimenters dissolved sugar crystals in heavy water, recrystallized them by evaporation, found that the sugar molecules had discarded some ordinary hydrogen atoms, taken on deuterium atoms in their stead. When luminous bacteria of the kind that produce phosphorescence in the sea were placed in heavy water at Princeton, their output of light was dimmed because their oxygen consumption was slowed. Pathologists at Manhattan's Memorial Hospital hoped heavy water might prove fatal to cancer cells, were disappointed to find the cells vigorous as ever after prolonged immersion.

Professor Ingo Waldemar Dagobert Hackh of San Francisco's College of Physicians & Surgeons communicated to Science a theory that the human body, which continually evaporates its water content, might gradually store up a richer & richer mixture of heavy water, which might well be the cause of old age. Dr. Urey rushed to the defense of his discovery, spurned the Hackh hypothesis as nothing but a theory based on no experiments.

Of late there has been talk of a third isotope of hydrogen whose atomic weight should be approximately 3 as against deuterium's 2 and hydrogen's 1. Two members of Dean Lewis's staff reported finding it last autumn (TIME, Nov. 20). But they used the same magneto-optic method by which Professor Allison predicted deuterium, and among scientists the worth of this procedure is debatable. In England Lord Rutherford (who calls deuterium diplogen and its nucleus the diplon) bounced deutons against deutons. Each collision produced a proton and something new of atomic weight 3. But cautious Lord Rutherford would not say whether the new product was an unexpected isotope of helium or the expected third isotope of hydrogen. To the chemists in St. Petersburg last week Dr. Ferdinand Graft Brickwedde of the U. S. Bureau of Standards, co-discoverer of deuterium, revealed that mass-three hydrogen had indisputably been identified by Dr. M. A. Tuve, L. R. Hafstad and Odd Dahl of Washington's Carnegie Institution.

Among other topics discussed at the St. Petersburg meetings:

Sea Gold. There are 1,500,000,000,000 oz. of gold in the world's seas, according to the Physical Tables of the Smithsonian Institution. If this store were distributed evenly among the earth's 2,000,000,000 inhabitants, every living human would receive the equivalent, at Roosevelt prices, of about $24,500. Last week Thomas Midgley Jr., vice president of Ethyl Gasoline Corp., predicted that extraction of the ocean's gold on a commercial scale would begin in ten years. Mr. Midgley pointed out that ten years ago no one thought it possible to get bromine from the ocean on a commercial basis. Today his corporation, with Dow Chemical Co., operates a plant south of Wilmington, N. C. on the Cape Fear River which every day sucks in 30,000,000 gal. of sea water from which, with the aid of chlorine and sulphuric acid, it frees 15,000 lb. of bromine (worth 36 cents per lb.) for use in antiknock gasoline.

Ketones. Infections of the kidney and bladder tract are hard for doctors to treat. Drs. Arnold E. Osterberg and Henry F. Helmholz of the Mayo Clinic reported experiments showing that ketonic bodies in the blood, such as acetone, diacetic acid and beta-oxybutyric acid, will cure such infections if generated in sufficient quantities. Best diet for stimulating ketone production is high in fat, low in proteins and sugar. Ideal fat-protein-sugar proportion: 140-25-15.

Prizeman. The Langmuir Prize of $1,000, established by a brother of Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir, is actually awarded to a promising chemist under 30. The Society announced last week that this year's plum will go to Dr. Charles Frederick Koelsch, 27, University of Minnesota researcher, teacher and bachelor, for the "quality and quantity" of his unspectacular work with organic compounds.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.