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| Ivan Pulyui got the first X-ray image of a live human skeleton 14 years before Wilhelm Roentgen PHÎÒÎ: wikipedia.org |
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
From theology to physics
Ivan Pulyui was born in 1845 in the village of Hrymayliv, now Ternopil oblast. In those years, Western Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and not many Ukrainians could afford the luxury of getting a decent education. However, Pulyui’s father was the mayor of Hrymayliv, which afforded Ivan the opportunity to finish primary school and then a classical high school in Ternopil. After school, Pulyui’s parents sent him to the theological school of the University of Vienna from which he graduated with honors, later also from the Department of Philosophy (1872) In 1876 Pulyui finished his doctorate on internal friction in gases at the University of Strasbourg under the supervision of August Kundt. Pulyui gave preference to experimental exploration of gases and vapor friction in vacuum devices and the phenomena generated by an electric current in a vacuum over a career in the priesthood.
The first results of his work were patents for a miner’s lamp and a new incandescent lamp with an extended lifetime. He designed the lamps on his own after mastering the craft of glassblowing. Simultaneously, Pulyui invented new devices for telephones and telephone stations and helped create the first electricity station in Europe producing alternating current. Still, direct current was considered to be safer at that time and several power plants producing DC were built under Pulyui’s supervision in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1875, Pulyui won a scholarship by the Ministry of Education of Austria and left for internship at the University of Strasbourg, where he shared laboratory with German scientist Roentgen. In 1876, Pulyui finished his doctorate on internal friction in gases and was offered a job in the affiliate of the German Higher Technical School in Prague.
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| A device for the measurement of mechanical equivalent of heat designed of by Ivan Pulyui PHÎÒÎ: wikipedia.org |
Magic lamp
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.
Nationality matters
14 years later the world was shaken by Wilhelm Roentgen’s invention. Prior to that, Roentgen had not released any publications on the subject of gas-discharge processes. But on December 28, 1895, the media reported about his inventions and Roentgen published his original paper titled “On A New Kind Of Rays” (Uber eine neue Art von Strahlen). The news of his invention spread rapidly and newspapers reported that Roentgen had made his discovery in the late hours of the night in his lab after all his assistants had gone home.
Pulyui read about it in the German newspaper Bohemia published in Prague. The article about the great discovery of the German scientist contained no references to the experiments of the Slavic scientist. Pulyui wrote a letter to Roentgen but received no reply.
Pulyui’s research had only scientific significance in the reticent Austro-Hungarian Empire, while in the unified German Empire his success made quite a sensation. Since 1894 Roentgen was appointed president of the University of Wurzburg in Bavaria. By a strange twist of fate the former Prime Minister of Bavaria Chlodwig Hohenlohe was appointed Chancellor of Germany the very same year.
Reports in the German press raised high interest in the new phenomenon and a whole host of new experiments. With the help of X-rays scientists successfully made interesting images that were demonstrated as amusing tricks of the eye.
At first Roentgen was quite skeptical about the possibility of the broad usage of the newly discovered X-rays in medicine. His radiograms were useless for diagnostics. Indeed, they were totally inexpressive and the exposure took 40 – 50 minutes.
By that time Pulyui successfully resolved the problem of the concentration of rays into beams and reduced the exposure to 2-5 seconds. His radiograms showed pathologic changes in patients’ bodies, which brought medicine to a radically new level. By the way, the first surgery in which radiogram diagnostics were used was performed in clinics of the Kyiv University in 1896. Puluyi was the mastermind behind them.
Explorers of Pulyui’s scientific heritage say he was much closer to contemporary concepts in his understanding of the nature of radiation than Roentgen, in whose laboratory it was prohibited to utter the word “electron” (identified as a particle in 1897). Pulyui has never been honored in his country, even though he worked at the Higher Technical School in Prague and spelled his name “Johann” in Derman. The very first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roentgen “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him”.
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| PHÎÒÎ: SHUTTERSTOCK |
Back to faith
Roentgen’s biographers accentuated his modesty, because he did not attend the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Stockholm giving an excuse that he was too busy with his experiments. Roentgen requested that his royalties be sent by mail, thereby avoiding the mandatory speech in which he was supposed to tell about his invention. Roentgen donated the monetary reward from his Nobel Prize to his university. Like Pierre Curie, Roentgen refused to take out patents related to his discovery, as he wanted mankind as a whole to benefit from practical applications of the same. He did not even want the rays to be named after him.
Roentgen rarely published scientific articles, seemingly because he was irritated by his sudden fame that interfered with his work. In his last will and testament Roentgen requested that all his notes about X-rays be destroyed. Nevertheless, his name was used to label this new branch of scientific engineering with the terms roentgenology, roentgen diagnosis, roentgenometry and X-ray structure analysis, which helps to define the atomic structure of substances.
“World history has never been just to certain individuals or certain nations. Small nations and their achievements are often neglected while the accomplishments of large nations are at times exaggerated,” wrote Slavko Bokshan, a Serbian scientist who worked in the same department as Pulyui and Roentgen.
Pulyui never disputed his copyright for the invention. In addition to his scientific research Pulyui made his contribution to promote Ukrainian culture and education. He actively supported opening of a Ukrainian university in Lviv and published articles to support Ukrainian language. Together with P. Kulish and I. Nechuy-Levytsky he translated Gospels and Psalter into Ukrainian. Being a professor Pulyui organized scholarships for Ukrainian students in Austria-Hungary. So, the Ukrainian scientist went down in the history books as the inventor of the X-ray, the author of a Ukrainian synopsis and a translator of the Bible.
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