Frederick Soddy (1877 - 1956)

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Frederick Soddy FRS (2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956) was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements.

Soddy was born at 5 Bolton Road, Eastbourne, England. He went to school at Eastbourne College, before going on to study at University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and at Merton College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1898 with first class honors in chemistry. He was a researcher at Oxford from 1898 to 1900.

Scientific career

In 1900 he became a demonstrator in chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he worked with Ernest Rutherford on radioactivity. He and Rutherford realized that the anomalous behaviour of radioactive elements was because they decayed into other elements. This decay also produced alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. When radioactivity was first discovered, no one was sure what the cause was. It needed careful work by Soddy and Rutherford to prove that atomic transmutation was in fact occurring.

In 1903, with Sir William Ramsay at University College London, Soddy showed that the decay of radium produced helium gas. In the experiment a sample of radium was enclosed in a thin-walled glass envelope sited within an evacuated glass bulb. After leaving the experiment running for a long period of time, a spectral analysis of the contents of the former evacuated space revealed the presence of helium.
Later in 1907, Rutherford and Thomas Royds showed that the helium was first formed as positively charged nuclei of helium (He2+) which were identical to alpha particles, which could pass through the thin glass wall but were contained within the surrounding glass envelope.

From 1904 to 1914, Soddy was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow. In May 1910 Soddy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1914 he was appointed to a chair at the University of Aberdeen, where he worked on research related to World War I.

The work that Soddy and his research assistant Ada Hitchins did at Glasgow and Aberdeen showed that uranium decays to radium. It also showed that a radioactive element may have more than one atomic mass though the chemical properties are identical.[16] Soddy named this concept isotope meaning 'same place'. The word 'isotope' was initially suggested to him by Margaret Todd. Later, J. J. Thomson showed that non-radioactive elements can also have multiple isotopes.

In 1913, Soddy also showed that an atom moves lower in atomic number by two places on alpha emission, higher by one place on beta emission. This was discovered at about the same time by Kazimierz Fajans, and is known as the radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy, a fundamental step toward understanding the relationships among families of radioactive elements. Soddy published The Interpretation of Radium (1909) and Atomic Transmutation (1953).

In 1918 he announced discovery of a stable isotope of Protactinium, working with John Arnold Cranston. This slightly post-dated its discovery by German counterparts; however, it is said their discovery was actually made in 1915 but its announcement was delayed due to Cranston's notes being locked away whilst on active service in the First World War.

In 1919 he moved to the University of Oxford as Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry, where, in the period up till 1936, he reorganized the laboratories and the syllabus in chemistry. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research in radioactive decay and particularly for his formulation of the theory of isotopes.

His work and essays popularising the new understanding of radioactivity was the main inspiration for H. G. Wells's The World Set Free (1914), which features atomic bombs dropped from biplanes in a war set many years in the future. Wells's novel is also known as The Last War and imagines a peaceful world emerging from the chaos. In Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt Soddy praises Wells’s The World Set Free. He also says that radioactive processes probably power the stars.

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In 1903, with Sir William Ramsay, Soddy verified that the decay of radium produced helium.

He had a great regard for the Indian epics of Ramayana and The Mahabharat.
In 1909 when academics were first beginning to grasp the awesome power of the atom, he did not take these ancient records as fable.

In the Interpretation of Radium (1909) he wrote these lines:

“Can we not read into them some justification for the belief that some former forgotten
race of men attained not only to the knowledge we have so recently won, but also to the power that is not yet ours?”

When Dr Soddy wrote the book, the atom-bomb box of Pandora had not yet been opened.

In 1909 when academics were first beginning to grasp the awesome power of the atom, physicist Frederick Soddy
wrote in his Interpretation of Radium: "I believe that there have been civilisations in the past that were
familiar with atomic energy, and that by misusing it they were totally destroyed."


(source: We Are Not The First: Riddles of Ancient Science - By Andrew Tomas p. 53).
For more refer to chapter on War in Ancient India and Vimanas.