Gerhard Carl Schmidt (5 July 1865 – 16 October 1949) was a German chemist.
Life
Schmidt was born in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
to German parents. He studied chemistry and in 1890 received his PhD for work with
Georg Wilhelm August Kahlbaum. In 1898, two months before
Marie Curie
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (; ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie ( ; ), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.
She was List of female ...
, Schmidt discovered that
thorium
Thorium is a chemical element; it has symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is a weakly radioactive light silver metal which tarnishes olive grey when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft, malleable, and ha ...
is
radioactive
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...
. Schmidt died of a stroke in
Münster
Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a ...
16 October 1949.
See also
*
List of multiple discoveries
Historians and sociologists have remarked the occurrence, in science, of " multiple independent discovery". Robert K. Merton defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each ...
References
External links
''Schmidt, Gerhard, Carl, Nathaniel: Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Retrieved September 03, 2019 from Encyclopedia.com''
1865 births
1949 deaths
19th-century German chemists
20th-century German chemists
British emigrants
People from the German Empire
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