Jaroslav Heyrovsky

Jaroslav Heyrovsky (1890-1967), Czech physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner. Heyrovsky devoted most of his scientific career to developments in the polarograph, an instrument that analyzes chemical solutions. It was for this invention that he received the 1959 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Heyrovsky was born in the city of Prague in what was then known as Austria-Hungary. When he was in high school he developed a keen interest in mathematics and physics. In 1909 Heyrovsky entered Charles University. There Jaroslav studied chemistry, physics, and mathematics. In 1913 he received his B.S. degree from University College in London. While visiting his hometown of Prague prior to pursuing his doctoral work in electrochemistry, Heyrovsky's career took a detour when World War I (1914-1918) broke out and he was assigned to a Czech military hospital for the duration of the conflict. Despite this, Heyrovsky continued his studies and in 1918 received his Ph.D. degree on his doctoral topic—the electrode potential of aluminum—and in 1919 he became assistant professor of chemistry at Charles University. He became head of the chemistry department in 1922 and held the position of full professor there from 1926 until 1950, when he was named director of the Polarographic Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1926 Heyrovsky lectured about his polarographic process at the University of Paris, an event that led him to make presentations to many universities in the United States.

Heyrovsky's development of the polarograph in 1924 led to tremendous strides in the automation of research. Not only did the polarograph automatically record the type and concentration of substances in a solution without altering the solution itself, but the instrument also reduced the time the process took by nearly 75 percent, from over an hour to about 15 or 20 minutes. Heyrovsky later helped reduce the processing time even further, to fractions of seconds. His work greatly aided medical and industrial researchers in their studies of biochemical reactions and of the electrochemical processes of organic and inorganic compounds.

In addition to receiving the 1959 Nobel Prize in chemistry for inventing and developing the polarograph, Heyrovsky won many other awards and helped bring worldwide attention to the achievements of his fellow Czech scientists. In his honor, the Polarographic Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences at Charles University was renamed the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Polarography in 1964.