Wells Soddy

Otto Hahn (1879-1968 Nobel Prize for chemistry 1944) and Lise PMeitner (1878-1968) as well as Frederik Soddy (1877-1956 Nobel Prize for chemistry 1921) discovered a further isotope in uranium pitchblende. 

Whether Wells s novel affected Soddy as much as Soddy s Interpretation of Radium influenced Wells is impossible to determine, but Soddy s move into monetary theory in the postwar period was, in some ways, already implicit in his alchemical vision of the new science.8 Modem alchemy—the atomic science of transmutation, with all its alchemical connections to spiritual systems, gold, and even greed—that Soddy had been exploring in his pre-War writings may have helped turn this Nobel Prize-winning chemist into what was commonly called a money crank. ... 

I also wish to thank the Bodleian Library at Oxford University for permission to do research in the Frederick Soddy Papers in their Modem Manuscripts collections, and the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University, for permission to work with Soddy s lecture notes and papers in their archives. I thank University College London, Special Collections, for permission to do research in the Sir William Ramsay Papers. I also thank the special collections librarians at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for access to H. G. Wells s papers, and the University of Texas at Austin Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center for access to Edith Sitwell s papers. Frances Soar of the Geographical Association, the administrators of the Frederick Soddy Tmst, and Maxwell Wright and Gwen Huntley of Bunkers Solicitors generously helped me in my efforts to track down an estate for Frederick Soddy s unpublished writings. And I wish to thank Mark Smithells and the Smithells family in New Zealand for permission to quote from Arthur Smithells s unpublished manuscript in the Frederick Soddy Papers. 

Rutherford s attitude toward chemistry was stereotyped by his jokes and barbs occasionally directed at his chemical colleagues. The later Manchester physicist P. M. S. Blackett recounted the famous crack, "All science is either physics or stamp collecting, "63 and it was said that Rutherford chafed at receiving the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry, rather than in Physics. In a lecture in which he described his theory of the nuclear atom, he joked that the "nucleus is a round, hard objectjust like Professor Perkins head."64 However, Rutherford expressed great respect for his chemist collaborator Frederick Soddy and for other chemists, as well. 

Section 1.2 deals with the time period from Dalton to the discovery of isotopes by Soddy and Fajans. Much of the discussion elaborates on the type of material found in introductory chemistry texts. It ends with the discovery of radioactivity by Becquerel and the developments which quickly followed. Section 1.3 starts with the discovery of the concept of isotopes in the early years of the twentieth century and ends with the invention of the mass spectrograph in 1922 by Aston. The literature relating to the work leading up to the 1913 papers by Soddy and Fajans is well and... 

As already noted, while it is the intention for the rest of this chapter to give references to original literature, this will not be done for the (extensive) literature on studies of radioactive decay series which preceded the publication of the historic papers of Soddy and Fajans in 1913. This material was well reviewed by F. Soddy (NLC 1921 ) in his Nobel Lecture which is used as the sole reference here (Soddy 1922). 

It was first identified and named brevium, meaning brief, by Kasimir Fajans and O. H. Gohring in 1913 because of its extremely short half-life. In 1918 Otto Hahn (1879—1968) and Lise Meitner (1878-1968) independently discovered a new radioactive element that decayed from uranium into (actinium). Other researchers named it uranium X2. It was not until 1918 that researchers were able to identify independently more of the elements properties and declare it as the new element 91 that was then named protactinium. This is another case in which several researchers may have discovered the same element. Some references continue to give credit for protactinium s discovery to Frederich Soddy (1877—1956) and John A. Cranston (dates unknown), as well as to Hahn and Meitner. 

Now we describe isotopes as atoms of the same element that have different nuclei, usually because they have different number of neutrons in the nueleus. Soddy introduced the term to describe elements that occupy the same place in the periodic table, He said that isotopes or isotopic elements were chemically identical and, in most respects that do not depend on the atomic mass, physically identical as well (19). The term is derived from the Greek iso- (same) and topos (place). 

Soddy wrote and spoke about the practical apphcations of radioactivity and envisioned nuclear energy as the basis for an advanced civihzation and as a solution to the increasing depletion of natural resources. His book The Interpretation of Radium (1914) inspired H. G. Wells to write his science fiction novel The World Set Free (published the same year). 

After he left Glasgow, Soddy abandoned his work on radioactivity and no longer followed recent advancements in the field. He developed an interest in financial, economic, social, and pohtical theories, which found no general acceptance, as well as tmusual mechanical and mathematical problems. 

---