Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
satisfaction that it was an excellent decision to learn Mössbauer spectroscopy and
apply it as a ''forefront tool'' in our research projects. I had first learned about it as
a young postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory in USA in the
early sixties, shortly after the discovery of the ''recoilless nuclear resonance
absorption'' by the young german physicist Rudolf L. Mössbauer, who made this
magnificent discovery while he was working on his doctoral thesis at the Max
Planck Institute in Heidelberg. Rudolf Mössbauer was only 32 years old when he
received the Nobel in Physics in 1961. It was very fortunate for me to be accepted
in a team of excellent physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, who had
concentrated on applying the Mössbauer effect to characterize inorganic com-
pounds and alloys by measuring the hyperfine interactions. It soon became clear
that Mössbauer's unique discovery would develop rapidly to a powerful spectro-
scopic tool in materials science. Now, nearly five decades later, close to 100,000
published reports dealing with Mössbauer spectroscopy, many textbooks, and
more than fifty international conferences, symposia and workshops held so far bear
testimony to the firm establishment of this nuclear spectroscopic technique in
various branches of solid state research, spreading over physics, chemistry, biol-
ogy, earth- and geoscience, archaeology and industrial applications. Professor
Mössbauer was an excellent speaker, and everybody was fascinated when he spoke
about the experiments for his doctoral thesis that led him to the discovery of
recoilless nuclear resonance absorption. Also, in many unforgettable personal
conversations with him I had the pleasure to learn about details concerning his
work. Such occasions never ended without discussions about piano music.
During the many years of my teaching spectroscopy in chemistry and physics,
Mössbauer spectroscopy has always been my favourite for several reasons: The
students become familiar with fundamental aspects on solid state and experimental
physics, cry physics, quantum mechanics and theoretical chemistry to name a few.
I consider it therefore highly recommendable, even necessary, that Mössbauer
spectroscopy and relevant neighbouring fields are always part of the education in
physics and chemistry.
Mössbauer spectroscopy has undoubtedly established as an elegant and versa-
tile tool in materials science, mostly in conjunction with other physical techniques
in order to reach deeper and more conclusive information in certain studies, but
also in cases where certain problems could not be solved with other techniques.
Quo vadis, Mössbauer effect research? Two outstanding developments have
opened new pathways in Mössbauer spectroscopy and will definitely play a
remarkable role in future: Without quality ranking, (1) the instrumental progress
regarding the miniaturization of a Mössbauer spectrometer (MIMOS), and (2) the
use of synchrotron radiation for observing nuclear resonance fluorescence. MI-
MOS has most spectacularly demonstrated its usefulness for extraterrestrial
studies, viz. the NASA missions to the planet Mars. There are, of course, also
hundreds of possibilities to use it on earth in mobile analytical studies outside the
laboratory. A real breakthrough in Mössbauer spectroscopy research was initiated
by E. Gerdau et al. in 1985 who proposed an unconventional Mössbauer technique
based on the possibility to use synchrotron radiation to observe nuclear resonance.
