Frederick Soddy
Encyclopedia
Frederick Soddy 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 small crater
named for him on the far side of the Moon
.
, 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
, 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.
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
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 rate
s 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". Soddy wrote that financial debts grew exponentially at compound interest but the real economy was based on exhaustible stocks of fossil fuels. Energy obtained from the fossil fuels could not be used again. This criticism of economic growth is echoed by his intellectual heirs in the now emergent field of ecological economics.
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.
Soddy married Winifred Beilby, the daughter of Sir George Beilby, in 1908. He died in Brighton, England in 1956.
The lunar crater Soddy
is named after him, as is the uranium compound Soddyite, found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
radiochemist
Radiochemistry
Radiochemistry is the chemistry of radioactive materials, where radioactive isotopes of elements are used to study the properties and chemical reactions of non-radioactive isotopes...
who explained, with Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics...
, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation
Nuclear transmutation
Nuclear transmutation is the conversion of one chemical element or isotope into another. In other words, atoms of one element can be changed into atoms of other element by '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 small crater
Soddy (crater)
Soddy is an eroded lunar impact crater lying on the far side of the Moon, invisible from the Earth, to the south-southeast of the prominent crater King. Material from the ray system surrounding King covers the sides and interior of Soddy...
named for him on the far side of the Moon
Far side of the Moon
The far side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that is permanently turned away, and is not visible from the surface of the Earth. The far hemisphere was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959, and was first directly observed by human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon...
.
Biography
Soddy was born at 6 Bolton Road, EastbourneEastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He went to school at Eastbourne College
Eastbourne College
Eastbourne College is a British co-educational independent school for day and boarding pupils aged 13–18, situated on the south coast of England, included in the Tatler list of top public schools. The College's current headmaster is Simon Davies. The College was founded by the Duke of Devonshire...
, before going on to study at University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and at Merton College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...
. He was a researcher at Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
from 1898 to 1900.
In 1900 he became a demonstrator in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, where he worked with Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics...
on radioactivity.
He and Rutherford realized that the anomalous behaviour of radioactive elements was because they decayed
Radioactive decay
Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...
into other elements.
This decay also produced alpha, beta, and gamma radiation
Gamma ray
Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays or hyphenated as gamma-rays and denoted as γ, is electromagnetic radiation of high frequency . Gamma rays are usually naturally produced on Earth by decay of high energy states in atomic nuclei...
. 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
Nuclear transmutation
Nuclear transmutation is the conversion of one chemical element or isotope into another. In other words, atoms of one element can be changed into atoms of other element by 'transmutation'...
was in fact occurring.
In 1903, with Sir William Ramsay
William Ramsay
Sir William Ramsay was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air" .-Early years:Ramsay was born in Glasgow on 2...
at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, Soddy verified that the decay of radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
produced alpha particles composed of positively charged nuclei of helium
Helium
Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and an atomic weight of 4.002602, which is represented by the symbol He. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table...
. 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.
From 1904 to 1914, Soddy was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
and while there he showed that uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
decays to radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
. It was here also that he showed that a radioactive element may have more than one atomic mass
Atomic mass
The atomic mass is the mass of a specific isotope, most often expressed in unified atomic mass units. The atomic mass is the total mass of protons, neutrons and electrons in a single atom....
though the chemical properties are identical. He named this concept isotope
Isotope
Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, which have differing numbers of neutrons. Atoms of a particular element by definition must contain the same number of protons but may have a distinct number of neutrons which differs from atom to atom, without changing the designation...
meaning 'same place' - the word 'isotope' was initially suggested to him by Margaret Todd
Margaret Todd (doctor)
Margaret Todd was a Scottish writer and doctor who in 1913 suggested the term "isotope" to chemist Frederick Soddy.-Career:...
. 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
Atomic number
In chemistry and physics, the atomic number is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom and therefore identical to the charge number of the nucleus. It is conventionally represented by the symbol Z. The atomic number uniquely identifies a chemical element...
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
In 1914 he was appointed to a chair at the University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
, where he worked on research related to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. 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
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
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
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
's The World Set Free
The World Set Free
The World Set Free is a novel published in 1914 by H. G. Wells. The book is considered to foretell nuclear weapons. It had appeared first in serialized form with a different ending as A Prophetic Trilogy, consisting of three books: A Trap to Catch the Sun, The Last War in the World and The World...
(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
Gold standard
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...
, let international exchange rate
Exchange rate
In finance, an exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency...
s float, use federal surpluses and deficits
Deficit spending
Deficit spending is the amount by which a government, private company, or individual's spending exceeds income over a particular period of time, also called simply "deficit," or "budget deficit," the opposite of budget surplus....
as macroeconomic policy tools
Macroeconomic policy instruments
Macroeconomic policy instruments refer to macroeconomic quantities that can be directly controlled by an economic policy maker. Instruments can be divided into two subsets: a) Monetary policy instruments and b) Fiscal policy instruments. Monetary policy is conducted by the Federal Reserve or the...
that could counter cyclical trends
Business cycle
The term business cycle refers to economy-wide fluctuations in production or economic activity over several months or years...
, and establish bureaus of economic statistics
Economic statistics
Economic statistics is a topic in applied statistics that concerns the collection, processing, compilation, dissemination, and analysis of economic data. It is also common to call the data themselves 'economic statistics', but for this usage see economic data. The data of concern to economic ...
(including a consumer price index
Consumer price index
A consumer price index measures changes in the price level of consumer goods and services purchased by households. The CPI, in the United States is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as "a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of...
) in order to facilitate this effort" - are now conventional practice, his critique of fractional-reserve banking
Fractional-reserve banking
Fractional-reserve banking is a form of banking where banks maintain reserves that are only a fraction of the customer's deposits. Funds deposited into a bank are mostly lent out, and a bank keeps only a fraction of the quantity of deposits as reserves...
still "remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom". Soddy wrote that financial debts grew exponentially at compound interest but the real economy was based on exhaustible stocks of fossil fuels. Energy obtained from the fossil fuels could not be used again. This criticism of economic growth is echoed by his intellectual heirs in the now emergent field of ecological economics.
He rediscovered the Descartes' theorem
Descartes' theorem
In geometry, Descartes' theorem, named after René Descartes, establishes a relationship between four kissing, or mutually tangent, circles. The theorem can be used to construct a fourth circle tangent to three given, mutually tangent circles.-History:...
in 1936 and published it as a poem. The kissing circles in this problem are sometimes known as Soddy circles.
Soddy married Winifred Beilby, the daughter of Sir George Beilby, in 1908. He died in Brighton, England in 1956.
The lunar crater Soddy
Soddy (crater)
Soddy is an eroded lunar impact crater lying on the far side of the Moon, invisible from the Earth, to the south-southeast of the prominent crater King. Material from the ray system surrounding King covers the sides and interior of Soddy...
is named after him, as is the uranium compound Soddyite, found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
See also
- Alfred J. LotkaAlfred J. LotkaAlfred James Lotka was a US mathematician, physical chemist, and statistician, famous for his work in population dynamics and energetics. An American biophysicist best known for his proposal of the predator-prey model, developed simultaneously but independently of Vito Volterra...
- Problem of ApolloniusProblem of ApolloniusIn Euclidean plane geometry, Apollonius' problem is to construct circles that are tangent to three given circles in a plane . Apollonius of Perga posed and solved this famous problem in his work ; this work has been lost, but a 4th-century report of his results by Pappus of Alexandria has survived...
- ErgosophyErgosophyErgosophy is a term coined by the scientist Frederick Soddy, in the early 1920s, and refers to aspects of energy in relation to human existence and energy measurement as in...
- ThermoeconomicsThermoeconomicsThermoeconomics, also referred to as biophysical economics, is a school of heterodox economics that applies the laws of thermodynamics to economic theory. The term "thermoeconomics" was coined in 1962 by American engineer Myron Tribus, and developed by the statistician and economist Nicholas...
- Radioactive displacement law of Fajans and SoddyRadioactive displacement law of Fajans and SoddyThe law of radioactive displacements, also known as Fajans and Soddy law, in radiochemistry and nuclear physics, is a rule governing the transmutation of elements during radioactive decay...
External links
- 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)