ABSTRACT
Radioactive isotopes of phosphorus (Greek: “lightbringing”) were among the first
artificially produced radioisotopes in the pioneering experiments by Fre´de´ric
Joliot and Ire´ne Curie in 1934, and by Enrico Fermi and his group in the same
year. In 1935, George Hevesy, after having seen the results of Fermi, was the
first to produce microcurie quantities of phosphorus-32 (P-32) in Copenhagen
by using a strong Ra/Be source given to Niels Bohr, and applying P-32 in a biological experiment to study the bio-distribution in rats (1). Soon, millicurie quan-
tities were being produced by Ernest O. Lawrence in the cyclotron at Berkeley,
California, and Lawrence started periodically sending Hevesy a few millicuries
of P-32 (2). Later, in 1937, Hevesy was possibly the first to give a dose of a
man-made radioactive substance to a human being in a study of the excretion
of P-32 in a hospital patient (3). Later work by Hevesy focused on the possible
use of P-32 as a red blood cell (RBC) label, which did not turn out to be satisfac-
tory, owing to insufficient stable RBC binding.
