J. Heyrovský, Japan, and organic polarography

Polarography is an electroanalytical technique based on recording current-voltage curves using a dropping mercury as the working electrode. It can be used for investigations of both reductions and oxidations of inorganic and organic species. Before WWII the developments of this technique linked Prague (in the then Czechoslovakia) with Kyoto (in Japan, where reductions of organic compounds were first observed). After WWII wide use of this technique has developed, so that in the 1950s and 1960 it became the fifth most frequently used analytical technique. More recently the analytical applications were limited to those of heterogeneous solutions and analyses of some drugs. Its applications in physical organic chemistry involve studies of structure-reactivity relationships and applications to investigations of equilibria and kinetics of rapidly or slowly established processes.