NOTEWORTHY UKRAINIANS

Ivan Pului, the discoverer of X-rays

by Danylo Kulynyak

Debate still persists as to who was the first to discover X-rays. Was it the Ukrainian scientist Jan Puluj (Ivan Puliui) or a German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, the 1901 Nobel Prize winner?

To give a name to a phenomenon is to discover it. It is this logic that made the name of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen immortal.

In the January 1896 issue of World Illustration, two articles were simultaneously published: one dealt with the German scientist Mr. Roentgen's discovery of X-rays, while the other described a series of experiments with the same X-rays performed by Jan Puluj (Ivan Puliui) a professor at Prague Polytechnical Institute.

The lives of both physicists are connected with Strasbourg University. In the 1890s both Messrs. Roentgen and Puliui worked in the same department under the guidance of Prof. Kundt, and Mr. Roentgen made a point of attending lectures given by Mr. Puliui. While at Strasbourg, Mr. Puliui commenced his experiments with X-rays, and Mr. Roentgen was soon to become fascinated by these phenomena.

Through his experiments into the nature of "cold light," Mr. Puliui invented an X-ray emitting device as early as 1881. The tubes of this invention became known as the "Pului lamp" and were mass-produced for a period. Mr. Puliui personally presented one of them to Mr. Roentgen. And it was Mr. Puliui, not Mr. Roentgen, who first demonstrated an X-ray photograph of a 13-year-old boy's broken arm and an X-ray photograph of his daughter's hand with a pin lying under it. A couple of years later, Mr. Roentgen was to publicly repeat the same experiments, but in doing so did not once credit Mr. Puliui's role in this discovery.

How is it then that Mr. Roentgen, and not Mr. Puliui, is automatically associated with the discovery of the X-ray? Although he perfectly understood the nature of the X-rays that he had discovered, Mr. Puliui's article "Luminous Electrical Matter and the Fourth State of Matter" was expressed in a way that 19th century science considered to be old-fashioned, which hindered the immediate acceptance of his work as a great discovery. Mr. Puliui's experiments were published in the "Notes" of the [Austrian] Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1880-1883; these were later published in a book that [Great Britain] Royal Society recognized as one of the most outstanding achievements of world science.

The society translated the book into English and published it. And all this is documented as having taken place seven years prior to the Mr. Roentgen's claim to discovering the X-ray. Despite strenuous efforts by the world's press to assert that Mr. Puliui was the first discoverer of the X-rays, the Nobel prize of 1901 was awarded to Mr. Roentgen.

Slavko Bokshan, a renown Serbian scientist who worked in the same department as Messrs. Puliui and Roentgen, remarked about Mr. Puliui's discovery: "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."

Mr. Puliui made many other discoveries as well. He is particularly noteworthy for inventing a device for determining the mechanical equivalent of heat which was exhibited at the world exhibition in Paris in 1878.

It was only recently that Mr. Puliui's name has come to be mentioned in academic circles both in his native Ukraine and abroad. Various works about him and about his accomplishments have been published, and Ukraine's technical university in Ternopil was named in his honor. This rise in popularity brings to mind the words of Mr. Puliui's colleague, Ukrainian writer Panteleymon Kulish: "Not only Ukraine, but the whole world, will shortly talk about the man who enlightened science and spirituality with reason." Science historian Wilhelm Formann has remarked that the name Ivan Puliui "belongs to those who formed the world at the turn of the centuries."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 9, 2000, No. 28, Vol. LXVIII

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