History: Russ Heath

[Mike Grissom <mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

The following appeared in the 10/20/97 San Jose
Mercury News:

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HEATH, Russ, 71,
...
who developed a way to identify elements through the
radioactive waves they emit; Wednesday of lung cancer
in Idaho Falls, Idaho.  Mr. Heath co-developed a process
with Robert Hofstadter, a Nobel laureate from Stanford
University, to read invisible gamma rays and wrote a
catalog of gamma ray frequencies that scientists still
use to identify substances.  The system is called
gamma ray spectroscopy, and Mr. Heath's catalog of gamma
rays is in the widely used Handbook of Chemistry and
Physics.