Ivan Pulyui. X-rays.
Nowadays, physicians advise their patients to have an X-ray done once
every two years. In truth, doctors should have recommended their
patients to have a “pulyui” done once every two years, because a
Ukrainian scientist named Ivan Pulyiu was the first to discover invisible
X-rays. If the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen did not have Pulyui’s
lamps, he would have never been awarded the Nobel Prize as the creator
of the X-ray.
In search of new types of illuminating devices, Pulyui designed in 1880
a lamp that emitted unknown rays. He noticed the lamp’s side effect,
namely barium crystals shimmering in its light. While examining the
new rays, Pulyui took unprecedented shots. In one of his first ones a pin
under a child’s hand showing the palm and finger bones was clearly
visible.
This was a picture of his daughter’s hand. Pulyui was the first to take a picture of the human skeleton.
Having discovered the unusual effect of his lamp, Pulyui began intensive research of this phenomenon in
which he described all the details. He periodically wrote about his research in the scientific journal of the
Austrian Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. During public lectures he demonstrated his “radiograms”
and even issued a scientific paper entitled Luminous Electrical Matter and the Fourth State of Matter in the
Notes of the Austrian Imperial Academy of Sciences. Pulyui described in detail unknown rays in 1880 –
1882 and his lamp was awarded a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1881.
Scientific contribution
Pulyui's apparatus for determining the mechanical
equivalent of heat.
As a result of experiments into what he called cold
light Pulyui developed the Pulyui lamp which was
mass-produced for a period.
Pulyui published his results in a scientific paper,
but expressed his ideas in an obscure manner using obsolete terminology. Pulyui
did gain some recognition when the work was translated and published as a book by the Royal Society in the
UK.
Pulyui made many other discoveries as well. He is particularly noted for inventing a device for
determining the mechanical equivalent of heat that was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1878.
Pulyui also participated in opening of several power plants in Austria-Hungary.
Honours
• Ukraine's Ternopil Ivan Pul'uj National Technical University is named after him.
• A stamp published on the occasion of Pulyui's 150th Birth Anniversary in 1995.
• Streets in Kiev, Lviv and other Ukrainian cities has the name of Ivan Pulyui.
History
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen is usually credited as the discoverer of X-rays because he was the first
to systematically study them, though he is not the first to have observed their effects. Wilhelm Röntgen was
the first to systematically study them, in 1895.
The important early researchers in X-rays were Ivan Pulyui, Heinrich Hertz, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison.
Ivan Pulyui
He continued his investigations when appointed professor at the Prague Polytechnic and in 1886 he
found that sealed photographic plates became dark when exposed to the emanations from the tubes. Early in
1896, just a few weeks after Röntgen published his first X-ray photograph, Pulyui published high-quality Xray images in journals in Paris and London. Although Pulyui had studied with Röntgen at the University of
Strasbourg in the years 1873–75, his biographer Gaida (1997) asserts that his subsequent research was
conducted independently.
Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery.
Röntgen discovered its medical use when he made a picture of his
wife's hand on a photographic plate formed due to X-rays.
The photograph of his wife's hand was the first ever photograph of a
human body part using X-rays. When she saw the picture,
she said "I have seen my death."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pulyui
inventor – винахідник
imagе – зображення
X-rays – Х-промені
mechanical equivalent of heat – мех. еквівалент високої температури
power plant – електростанція
emanation - випромінювання