Frederick Soddy
Frederick Soddy | |
---|---|
File:Frederick Soddy (Nobel 1922).png | |
Born | |
Died | 22 September 1956 Brighton, England | (aged 79)
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | Aberystwyth University Merton College, Oxford |
Known for | Nuclear transmutation of radioelements Radioisotopes Coining the term isotope Energy in economics Soddy's hexlet Soddy circles |
Awards | Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1921) Lunar crater Soddy |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Radiochemistry, Economics |
Institutions | McGill University (1900-1903) University of Glasgow (1904-1914) University of Aberdeen (1914-1919) Oxford University (1919-1936) |
Academic advisors | Ernest Rutherford |
Doctoral students | Iimori Satosayu |
Frederick Soddy (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. He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1921, and has a crater named for him on the far side of the Moon.
Biography
Soddy was born in 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. He was a researcher at Oxford from 1898 to 1900.
In 1900 he became a demonstrator in chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 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 verified that the decay of radium produced alpha particles composed of positively charged nuclei of helium. In the experiment a sample of radium was enclosed in a thin walled glass envelope sited within an evacuated glass bulb. Alpha particles could pass through the thin glass wall but were contained within the surrounding glass envelope. 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. This element had recently been discovered in the solar spectrum by Bunsen and Kirchoff.[1]
From 1904 to 1914, Soddy was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow and while there he showed that uranium decays to radium. It was here also that he showed that a radioactive element may have more than one atomic mass though the chemical properties are identical. He 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. 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 a fundamental step toward understanding the relationships among families of radioactive elements. Soddy published The Interpretation of Radium (1909) and Atomic Transmutation (1953). In May 1910 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society [2]
In 1914 he was appointed to a chair at the University of Aberdeen, where he worked on research related to World War I. In 1919 he moved to Oxford University 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.
In four books written from 1921 to 1934, Soddy carried on a "quixotic campaign for a radical restructuring of global monetary relationships", offering a perspective on economics rooted in physics—the laws of thermodynamics, in particular—and was "roundly dismissed as a crank". While most of his proposals - "to abandon the gold standard, let international exchange rates float, use federal surpluses and deficits as macroeconomic policy tools that could counter cyclical trends, and establish bureaus of economic statistics (including a consumer price index) in order to facilitate this effort" - are now conventional practice, his critique of fractional-reserve banking still "remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom".[3]
He rediscovered the Descartes' theorem in 1936 and published it as a poem. The kissing circles in this problem are sometimes known as Soddy circles.
He died in Brighton, England. He had married Winifred Beilby, daughter of Sir George Beilby, in 1908.
The lunar crater Soddy is named after him.
Bibliography
- Radioactivity (1904)
- The Interpretation of Radium (1909) (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)
- The Chemistry of the Radioactive Elements (1912–1914)
- Matter and Energy (1912)
- Science and life: Aberdeen addresses (1920)
- Cartesian Economics: The Bearing of Physical Science upon State Stewardship (1921)
- Science and Life Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt Money versus Man etc (1921)
- Nobel Lecture - The origins of the conception of isotopes (1922)
- Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt. The solution of the economic paradox (George Allen & Unwin, 1926)
- The wrecking of a scientific age (1927)
- The Interpretation of the Atom (1932)
- Money versus Man (1933)
- The Role of Money, Frederick Soddy (George Routledge & Sons Ltd, 1934. Internet Archive Gutenberg)
- Money as nothing for something ; The gold "standard" snare (1935)
- Present outlook, a warning : debasement of the currency, deflation and unemployment (1944)
- The Story of Atomic Energy (1949)
- Atomic Transmutation (1953)
See also
- Alfred J. Lotka
- Problem of Apollonius
- Ergosophy
- Econophysics
- Radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy
Notes
- ^ William Ramsay; Frederick Soddy (1903 - 1904). "Experiments in Radioactivity, and the Production of Helium from Radium". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 72: 204–207. doi:10.1098/rspl.1903.0040.
{{cite journal}}
: Check date values in:|year=
(help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Library and Archive". Royal Society.
{{cite web}}
: Text "accessdate- 19 October 2010" ignored (help) - ^ Eric Zencey: Mr. Soddy’s Ecological Economy. In: The New York Times. April 12, 2009
References
- Mansel Davies (1992). "Frederick Soddy: The scientist as prophet". Annals of Science. 49 (4): 351–367. doi:10.1080/00033799200200301.
- George B. Kauffman (1997). "The World Made New: Frederick Soddy, Science, Politics, and Environment". Isis. 88 (3): 564. doi:10.1086/383825.
- Daly, Herman E. Winter (1980). "The economic thought of Frederick Soddy". History of Political Economy. 12 (4): 469–488. doi:10.1215/00182702-12-4-469.
- Freeman M. I. (1979). "Soddy, Frederick and the Practical Significance of Radioactive Matter". Britisch Journal for the History of Science. 12 (42): 257–260. doi:10.1017/S0007087400017313.
- Richard E. Sclove (1989). "From Alchemy to Atomic War: Frederick Soddy's "Technology Assessment" of Atomic Energy, 1900-1915". Science, Technology, & Human Values. 14 (2): 163. doi:10.1177/016224398901400203., pp. 163–194
- Linda Merricks (1996). The World Made New: Frederick Soddy, Science, Politics, and Environment. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 0198559348.
- A. N. Krivomazov (1978). Frederick Soddy: 1877-1956. Moscow: Nauka. p. 208.
- George B. Kauffman (1986). Frederick Soddy (1877-1956): Early Pioneer in Radiochemistry (Chemists and Chemistry). Dordrecht; Boston; Hingham: D. Reidel Pub. Co. p. 272. ISBN 978-9027719263.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
- The Central Role of Energy in Soddy's Holistic and Critical Approach to Nuclear Science, Economics, and Social Responsibility
- Annotated bibliography for Frederick Soddy from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- M. King Hubbert on the Nature of Growth. 1974
- A biography of Frederick Soddy by Arian Forrest Nevin
- The Frederick Soddy Trust
- Frederick Soddy Biography (The official web site of the Nobel Foundation)