Tracing with Radioactive Isotopes

More than a century ago, George de Hevesy realized that radioactive isotopes can be used as tracers‒substances that can be used to trace the behavior of the collective mass. Not only could he use radiotracers to unveil that his boarding house cafeteria reused leftovers to prepare the next day’s meal, but de Hevesy also was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery. Nowadays, many science fields routinely use radioactive tracers. At the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a program is dedicated to the production of unique radioisotopes, one study focused on the radioisotope Zn-62, an important radio-tracer to follow zinc in plants and in nuclear medicine.