The interpretation of radium / by Frederick Soddy.

  • Soddy, Frederick, 1877-1956.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The interpretation of radium / by Frederick Soddy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the simple and direct answer to many problems before deemed insoluble. We recognise now causes at work where before we only saw effects, many of them so familiar and ingrained in our consciousness that the necessity for a cause had been almost overlooked, or, if felt at all, met per- functorily and wholly inadequately by existing knowledge. Highly technical and complicated as many of the researches on radioactivity are, the main conclusions of the science are as simple and certain as they are fundamental, and of general interest. It is the duty of every educated man to make himself aware of the chief bearinos O of these conclusions, for they touch human life strangely at many points, and are destined in the future to influence profoundly the course of philo- sophic thought. In a few years the elementary principles of radioactivity will be taught in all schools as belonging to the very beginnings of physical science. To-night, while all is strange and new and the very name of the science even unfamiliar, it may appear a far cry to attempt to foretell the effects these discoveries, concerned primarily with the ultimate nature of matter, are destined to exert on our conceptions of the ultimate destiny of man. But already the most direct con- nection is apparent. Indeed, this aspect of the advance Is perhaps the most revolutionary. We