Ivan Pulyui

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Johann Puluj

Ivan Pulyui (Іван Пулюй, Ivan Pulyuy, Johann Puluj) (February 2, 1845 in Hrymayliv village - January 31, 1918 in Prague) was a Ukrainian physicist, inventor and patriot who has been championed as an early developer of the use of X-rays for medical imaging. His contributions were largely neglected until the end of the 20th century.

Graduated with honors from theological faculty of Wien University, later also from the Department of Philosophy (Division of Physics and Mathematics) of the same school. Pulyui was teaching in a Navy academy in Fiume (Rijeka, Croatia), Wien University, Higher Technical School in Prague, dean of Electrotechnical Faculty in Prague University. Pulyui was also the state adviser on electrotechnique in Czech and Moravian governments.

Pulyui, as a result of experiments into what he called cold light, is reputed to have developed an X-ray emitting device as early as 1881. Pulyui reputedly first demonstrated an X-ray photograph of a 13-year-old boy's broken arm and an X-ray photograph of his daughter's hand with a pin lying under it. The device became known as the Pulyui lamp and was mass-produced for a period. Reputedly, Pulyui personally presented one to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen who went on to be credited as the major developer of the technology.

Pulyui published his results in a scientific paper, Luminous Electrical Matter and the Fourth State of Matter in the Notes of the Austrian Imperial Academy of Sciences (1880-1883), but expressed his ideas in an obscure manner using obsolete terminology. Pulyui did gain some recognition when the work was translated and published as a book by the Royal Society in the UK.

Pulyui made many other discoveries as well. He is particularly noted for inventing a device for determining the mechanical equivalent of heat that was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1878.

Pulyui is also know for his contribution in promoting Ukrainian culture. Together with P. Kulish and I. Nechuy-Levytsky) he translated Gospels and Psalter to Ukrainian.

[edit] Quotes

"World history has never been just to certain individuals or certain nations. Small nations and their achievements are often neglected while the accomplishments of large nations are at times exaggerated."
- Slavko Bokshan, a Serbian scientist who worked in the same department as Pulyui and Roentgen
"Not only Ukraine, but the whole world, will shortly talk about the man who enlightened science and spirituality with reason."
- Ukrainian writer Panteleymon Kulish
The name Ivan Pulyui "belongs to those who formed the world at the turn of the centuries."
- Science historian Wilhelm Formann