May 9, 1909 - Birth of Hilde Levi, a pioneer in the use of radiocarbon dating techniques and autoradiography

She studied physics and chemistry at the universities of Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin, graduating from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry, Physics and Electrochemistry in Berlin.

Despite the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933, she managed to finish his doctoral thesis in 1934 under the supervision of Peter Pringsheim and Fritz Haber before his exile.

In 1934, with the help of the Danish branch of the International Federation of University Women, she secured a position at the Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Although safe in Denmark, Levi was punished by the Nazis when the faculty of the University of Berlin annulled her doctoral degree in 1938.

Levi worked as an assistant to James Franck, jointly publishing two papers on the fluorescence of chlorophyll, and to Hungarian physical chemist George de Hevesy, with whom, due to the recent discovery of induced radioactivity and the consequent creation of short-lived radioactive isotopes, she opened up some new uses for radioactive substances in biology, explored and published a series of papers.

Levi remained in Copenhagen until 1940 and then worked at the Wenner-Gren Institute for Experimental Biology in Stockholm. When the war ended, he accepted a position at the Zoophysiological Laboratory in Copenhagen, for which he would work until his retirement in 1979.

Levi spent the academic year 1947-1948 in the United States, the first of several visits by the researcher. There he learned how to apply carbon-14 in determining the age of carbon-containing substances. The Danish National Museum in Copenhagen recognised her expertise in this field and supported the development of an apparatus for age determination based on carbon-14 dating, the first such device in Europe. The device was first used in 1951. During her visits to the United States, she also became familiar with the technique of autoradiography, developing a new technique in this field while working for the US Atomic Energy Commission at the University of Rochester, New York.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Hilde Levi