Pál Szily

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Pál von Szily (born May 16, 1878 in Budapest , † August 18, 1945 in Mosonmagyaróvár ) was a Hungarian physician and chemist. He played a role in the introduction of the pH scale .

Life

Pál von Szily came from a family of doctors, his father Adolf Szily was an ophthalmologist and director of the Jewish hospital in Budapest. He studied medicine at the University of Budapest from 1896 and was awarded a Dr. med. PhD. From 1901 he was an assistant at the Institute of Physiology in Budapest and from 1905 he was at the Surgical Clinic. From 1909 he headed the serological and bacteriological laboratory at the Jewish hospital in Budapest. There I worked with Paul Ehrlich , as he accompanied the introduction of Salvarsan and corresponded with Ehrlich about it. During the First World War, he worked as an epidemiologist in the fight against typhus and equine diseases (equine flu). After the First World War he dealt with chemotherapy and protein therapy, had his own medical practice in Budapest and worked as a urologist in Mosonmagyaróvár from 1928. In 1944 he was arrested as a Jew by the National Socialists and taken to a camp near Györ. He survived this (thanks to his professional contacts he managed to escape to Germany in the last days of the war in Hungary) and returned to his place of residence, but died soon after of the consequences of the stay in the camp (insufficient supply of medication, he was Diabetic).

His brother Aurel von Szily (1880–1945) was a well-known ophthalmologist and professor in Münster and Budapest.

plant

He undertook his experiments on hydrogen ion concentration and acid-base indicators as an assistant at the Physiological Institute in Budapest from 1901. Physiologists were particularly interested in measuring acid strength, since even small changes in pH, for example in the blood, can have major effects. Among other things, he looked for indicators and produced buffer solutions, which ultimately contributed to the introduction of the pH scale by Søren Sørensen in 1909. Szily published on this in 1903 in Hungarian (title in German translation: Application of indicators in determining the reaction of animal fluids, Orvosi Hetilap, Volume 45, 1903, pp. 509-518). A determination of the hydrogen ion concentration with titrimetry was not possible in the blood serum and Szily came up with the idea of ​​using indicators and succeeded in setting up a scale with the help of seven indicators. In doing so, he discovered the buffering properties of blood serum. In 1903 Szily gave lectures to the Physiological Society in Berlin and continued his research with the support of Hans Friedenthal at the University of Berlin, Friedenthal also researching in this direction. There Szily also invented artificially produced buffer solutions (various phosphate solutions) for the use of indicators.

About 30 scientific publications come from him. As a doctor, he mainly published in the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift and the Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Szabadvary, article Szily in Dict. Sci. Biogr.
personal data
SURNAME Szily, Pál
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Szily, Pál of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian chemist and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1945
Place of death Mosonmagyaróvár