How a disgruntled scientist looking to prove his food wasn't fresh discovered radioactive tracers and won a Nobel Prize 80 years ago

Artemis Spyrou, Professor of Nuclear Physics, Michigan State University, Sean Liddick, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Michigan State University, and Katharina Domnanich, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Michigan State University
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Each October, the Nobel Prizes celebrate a handful of groundbreaking scientific achievements. For George de Hevesy, the 1943 Nobel Laureate in chemistry who discovered radioactive tracers, that place was a boarding house cafeteria in Manchester, U.K., in 1911. De Hevesey had the sneaking suspicion that the staff of the boarding house cafeteria where he ate at every day was reusing leftovers from the dinner plates – each day's soup seemed to contain all of the prior day's ingredients.