Elizabeth Rona

Lore & Background

Elizabeth Rona was born in Budapest to a prosperous Jewish physician who introduced radium therapy to the city. She studied chemistry, geochemistry, and physics at the University of Budapest, earning her PhD in 1912. During postdoctoral work with George de Hevesy (1914–1918), she developed a theory that the velocity of diffusion depended on the mass of the nuclides and confirmed the existence of Uranium-Y (thorium-231), a beta emitter with a 25-hour half-life. She became the first woman to teach chemistry at university level in Hungary.

In 1924, Rona joined the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna. She studied polonium separation at the Curie Institute in Paris under Irène Joliot-Curie, developing an enhanced method of preparing polonium sources. She collaborated with Marietta Blau, Hans Pettersson, and Berta Karlik. With Karlik, she won the Haitinger Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1933. After the 1938 Anschluss, she left the Radium Institute due to antisemitic persecution, working briefly in Budapest, Sweden, and Oslo before returning to Hungary.

In 1941, Rona fled to the United States. She was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship to research at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, and later worked at the Naval Research Laboratory. She became a nuclear chemistry professor at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, then transferred to the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Miami, continuing work on geochronology of seabed elements and radiometric dating.

Reader's Guide

Elizabeth Rona's significance lies in her foundational contributions to nuclear chemistry, particularly in isotope separation and polonium preparation. Her enhanced method of preparing polonium samples made her the leading international expert in the field, and her technical information supported the Manhattan Project. Her confirmation of Uranium-Y (thorium-231) advanced the understanding of radioactive decay chains at a time when few atomic elements were known. Her theory that diffusion velocity depends on nuclide mass, though published in a footnote, laid groundwork for later mass spectrographic and heavy water studies. Rona's career spanned multiple countries and institutions, reflecting both the scientific mobility and the disruptions of war and persecution in the early 20th century. Her later work on radiometric dating of seabed elements contributed to geochronology. She was posthumously inducted into the Tennessee Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.

Did You Know?

• The term 'tracer' in the context of radioactive isotopes is generally attributed to George de Hevesy, not Rona.
• Rona's work was associated with the Carnegie Institution and later the Naval Research Laboratory.