H. Schwartz observed in 1955 that the decay of the tritium molecule  =  should generate the helium hydride ion  with high probability.
In 1963, F. Cacace at the Sapienza University of Rome conceived the decay technique for preparing and studying organic radicals and carbenium ions. In a variant of that technique, exotic species like methanium are produced by reacting organic compounds with the  that is produced by the decay of  that is mixed with the desired reagents.  Much of what we know about the chemistry of  came through this technique.