Observations placeholder

Frederick Soddy: The Scientist as Prophet – Professor Mansel Davies [May 1991]

In 1900, Soddy travelled to Canada and by what, at best, can be called a lucky accident, joined Rutherford in the Physics Department of McGill University, Montreal, as the chemist he [Rutherford] needed to help unravel what were the transformations occurring in the radioactive processes described by the Curies.

By 1903, in a series of nine joint papers, Rutherford and Soddy revealed the essential and, at the time, extraordinary changes in the chemical elements accompanying this transformation of uranium into lead. So revolutionary was the thesis, stating that atoms of the chemical elements were being changed into those of neighbouring elements, that many senior chemists refused to accept this deduction. That Soddy played a major role in this revolution in the physical sciences is established by Rutherford's own statement:

The work published by us was joint work in the full sense of the term: for Mr. Soddy not only assisted in the experimental work but also supplied many of the suggestions and explanations incorporated in our published papers.

This statement, in Rutherford's handwriting, is reproduced in facsimile in Muriel Howorth, Pioneer Research on the Atom: The Life Story of Frederick Soddy (London, 1958), p. 319 **

The emphasis on 'supplied' (M.D.) is necessary in view of much which happened later, greatly to upset Soddy.

Having returned from Montreal, Soddy went to work in London with Professor (Sir) William Ramsay. In July 1903, he identified the a-particles from radium: they formed normal helium gas. This established the reality of the revolutionary changes envisaged in the Rutherford-Soddy interpretation of radioactive processes. It related them to acceptable, stable, chemical elements.

***********************************************************************************************************

** Soddy left Mrs Howorth his papers and correspondence (now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) and made her his literary executrix. Her enthusiasm and partiality for Soddy are not matched by scientific knowledge. The ordering of the material is such as frequently to cause frustration, and the indexing is indifferent, but the volume is extremely rich in its contents. Letters and other papers from Soddy's contemporaries are generously quoted. One learns, for instance, that in 1901, Soddy and Rutherford each applied for chairs in the U.K., Soddy at Aberystwyth and Rutherford at Edinburgh. Both chairs went to men senior in years. Rutherford's reference for Soddy's application for the chair at Aberdeen is also given (p. 192).