Our journal is now 50 years old Part 1: How it all started

“Founded in 1965 as Isotopenpraxis by Justus Mühlenpfordt and Carl Friedrich Weiss” – This opening line of each printed volume of Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies recalls the start of our journal 50 years ago in Leipzig, Germany. The well-known nuclear scientists Mühlenpfordt (1911–2000) and Weiss (1901–1981) had come to Leipzig with interesting curricula vitae. Due to the experience of both of them in nuclear and isotope research gained up to 1945, Soviet occupying forces in East Germany “invited” both and many other German scientists to go to the Soviet Union working there on projects related to the Soviet atomic bomb. It was not until 1955, after 10 years, that they all were released – into East Germany. The East German government had agreed with the Soviet Union to keep the scientists there. Mühlenpfordt and Weiss were allowed to construct and fit out convenient modern research buildings in Leipzig side by side. Although Mühlenpfordt’s Institut für stabile Isotope (ISI) and Weiss’s Institut für angewandte Radioaktivität (IAR) perceived each other as scientific rivals, both directors agreed to found a journal named Isotopenpraxis bringing together research results about both radioactive and stable isotopes. To be exact, it is to be mentioned that a forerunner of our journal called Isotopentechnik was edited in the years 1960–1964. However, its publication had to be ceased then because it impinged upon the rights of a journal with the same name, which had been published in Munich already since 1958. The very first paper of Isotopenpraxis was written by Justus Mühlenpfordt: “New aspects in the application of stable isotopes” (in German) [1]. The paper, including a photograph of the new ISI building with its 40 m high isotope separation tower, is a document of a happy and proud scientist enjoying the success of his institute in the sectors of stable isotope separation, stable isotope analysis, stable isotope use, and theory of isotope effects. Most of the following issues of Isotopenpraxis were opened by review articles such as presentations of East German institutions using radioactivity (e.g. nuclear medical clinics) which did research and worked or dealt with the application of isotopes and radiation. Other reviews were published to encourage East German companies to use radioactive sources, e.g. “Radiation to keep food longer” written in 1967 by Uhlig [2]. At those times more than 90% of the papers were related to the application of radioactive isotopes in industry and research as well as to the development and use of radioactive sources. If stable isotopes were handled at all, then in their enriched form as tracers as in a paper published by Faust “Methods of sample preparation to analyse 15N compounds” in 1965 [3]. For the first time, the applicability of highly deuterated compounds to stabilize industrial products was proved by Mühlenpfordt [4] and Krumbiegel et al. [5] in 1966. Another successful department of the ISI dealt with and published about separation techniques of stable isotopes, see, e.g. a corresponding dissertation by Missbach [6].