Aluminium amalgam with it to form the amalgam. This process can continue well beyond the immediately exposed metal surface, potentially reacting with a large part of the bulk aluminium before it finally ends. The net result is similar to the mercury electrodes often used in electrochemistry, except instead of providing electrons from an electrical supply they are provided by the aluminium which becomes oxidized in the process. The reaction that occurs at the surface of the amalgam may actually be a hydrogenation rather than a reduction. The presence of water in the solution is reportedly necessary; the electron rich amalgam will oxidize
Women in chemistry the only woman to be award two Nobel prizes). Her prize in chemistry was for her "discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element." Irene Joliot-Curie, Marie's daughter, became the second woman to be awarded this prize in 1935 for her discovery of artificial radioactivity. Dorothy Hodgkin won the prize in 1964 for the development of protein crystallography. Among her significant discoveries are the structures of penicillin and vitamin B12. Forty five years later, Ada Yonath shared the prize with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas