These achievements led to Walter and Ida being awarded the German Chemical Society's prestigious Liebig Medal in 1931.

The group bombarded columbite with a beam of electrons and deduced element 43 was present by examining X-ray diffraction spectrograms.

The wavelength of the X-rays produced is related to the atomic number by a formula derived by Henry Moseley.

John T. Armstrong of the National Institute of Standards and Technology ran computer simulations of the experiments and obtained results very close to those reported by the 1925 team; the claim was further supported by work published by David Curtis of the Los Alamos National Laboratory measuring the (tiny) natural occurrence of technetium.

After World War II he changed to the University of Bamberg and in 1956 he became director of the newly founded Research Institute for geochemistry there.