science · 12 February 1950 · 75 years ago
death
Died 12 Feb 1950 at age 60 (born 5 Oct 1889).
Dutch physicist who (working with Georg von Hevesy) discovered the element hafnium by skillfully applying Henry Moseley's method of X-ray analysis to distinguish the spectral lines of hafnium, despite the distraction of some extraneous lines. Niels Bohr had suggested they look closely at an ore of zirconium, a homologue, for the new element. Bohr heard by telephone of their success on the day of his Nobel Prize lecture (11 Dec 1922), in which he then announced their discovery. The element, at. no.72, was named for Hafnia, the old Roman name for Copenhagen. Earlier, working at Bohr's laboratory in Copenhagen, Coster had used X-rays to provide experimental data to support Bohr's theory of atomic structure and the periodic table. He died from a spinal disease which progressively totally paralysed him.
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