Abstract
<jats:p>“How Old Is the World? Friedrich Paneth (1887–1958) and the Search for the Secrets of Matter. A Portrait of a Chemist Who Explored Some of Science’s Biggest Questions Through the Tiniest Traces of Matter—from Radioactive Elements and Free Radicals to Meteorites and Cosmochemistry.” By Christoph Maulbetsch (German language).</jats:p> <jats:p>A chemist nominated for the Nobel Prize 34 times, with a lunar crater named after him and a mineral bearing his name—and yet Friedrich Adolf Paneth is now known almost exclusively to specialists. His scientific path led through some of the most exciting fields of twentieth-century research: from radiochemistry and the tracer method to metal hydrides and free radicals, and on to early cosmochemistry and the question of how old meteorites, and thus the solar system, really are.</jats:p> <jats:p>This first comprehensive biography traces the life and work of a researcher who repeatedly worked at the boundaries of established disciplines. Paneth contributed to research that expanded the methodological repertoire of modern chemistry. At the same time, he pursued large questions, including the concept of the element at a moment when radioactivity and the discovery of isotopes unsettled some of chemistry’s most familiar certainties. His name is also associated with spectacular false leads: supposed transmutations of elements, misinterpreted traces of helium, and a meteorite date that later had to be rejected.</jats:p> <jats:p>This biography is also a work of both scientific and contemporary history. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Paneth was forced into emigration in 1933. After periods in London and Durham, as well as a wartime stay in the Montreal atomic project, he returned to Germany in 1953 as director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. His return, his networks in exile, and his efforts on behalf of persecuted colleagues reveal a scientist whose career was shaped by intellectual ambition, political violence, institutional rupture, and moral choice.</jats:p> <jats:p>The author brings together biography, the history of science, and clear explanations of chemical research practice, presenting Friedrich Adolf Paneth as a charismatic figure who moved across the boundaries of chemistry during politically charged times: brilliant, ambitious, productive, vulnerable, and not immune to error.</jats:p>