Geiger counter
Contador Geiger
- Date
- 1908-1928 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany
- Credited to
- Hans Geiger and Walther Müller (building on Geiger's 1908 alpha-particle counter, supervised by Ernest Rutherford in Manchester)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
Geiger and his student Müller sealed the detector tube into a rugged, portable instrument able to count alpha, beta and gamma particles, a major advance on the 1908 counter that only detected alpha particles.
The original 1908 counter (Geiger with Rutherford, Manchester) only detected alpha particles; the 1928 Geiger-Müller tube is the sealed, practical version that gave the instrument its popular name.
What it led to
- Practical, portable radioactivity detection
- Radiological safety protocols
- Prospecting for radioactive minerals