Frederick Soddy

At 79 years old, Frederick Soddy physical status not available right now. We will update Frederick Soddy's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Scientific career

He became a demonstrator of chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he collaborated with Ernest Rutherford on radioactivity in 1900. He and Rutherford understood that the mysterious behavior of radioactive elements had arisen because they devolved into other substances. This decay also produced alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. No one knew what the cause was when radioactivity was first detected. To demonstrate that atomic transmutation was in fact occurring, Soddy and Rutherford's careful work was required.

Soddy's decomposition of radium resulted in helium gas, according to Sir William Ramsay of University College London in 1903. A sample of radium was embedded in a thin-walled glass envelope enclosed within an evacuated glass bulb during the experiment. After leaving the experiment running for a long time, a spectral analysis of the contents of the former evacuated space revealed the presence of helium. Rutherford and Thomas Royds reported that the helium was first created as positively charged nuclei of helium (He2+), which were similar to alpha particles and could penetrate through the thin glass wall but were not contained within the glass envelope.

Soddy was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow from 1904 to 1914. Ruth Pirret served as his research assistant during this period. Soddy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1910. He was appointed to a chair at the University of Aberdeen in 1914, where he worked on World War I research.

Soddy reported that an atom moves lower in atomic number by two places on alpha emission, but that beta emission is up by a single place. This was discovered about the same time as Kazimierz Fajans' work and Fajans and Soddy's radioactive displacement statute, a significant step toward understanding families of radioactive elements. Although chemical characteristics are similar, Soddy described the phenomenon in 1913 in which a radioactive element may have more than one atomic mass, but the physical properties are identical. This term, he describes, is synonymous with "same place." Margaret Todd had the word initially suggested to him. J. J. Thomson showed that non-radioactive substances can also have multiple isotopes.

Soddy's research assistant Ada Hitchins' work in Glasgow and Aberdeen showed that uranium decays to radium.

Soddy's book The Interpretation of Radium (1909) and Atomic Transmutation (1953).

He reported the discovery of an isotope of the element protactinium while working with John Arnold Cranston in 1918. This little-dated its find by Germans Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn; however, the Germans' discovery was delayed due to Cranston's notes being held back whilst on active service in the First World War.

In 1919, he joined Oxford University as the first Dr. Lee's Professor of Chemistry, where, in the period up to 1936, he reorganized the labs and the curriculum in chemistry. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for his work in radioactive decay, and in particular for the development of the theory of isotopes.

The key inspiration for H. G. Wells' book The World Set Free (1914), which features atomic bombs recovered from biplanes in a conflict that may be many years in the future, was his research and essays promoting the new understanding of radioactivity. The Last War by Wells is also known as The Last War, and it imagines a peaceful world emerging from the chaos. Wells' The World Set Free, a wealth, virtual Wealth, and Debt Soddy honors Wells' book The World Set Free. The stars are also believed to be powered by radioactive reactions, according to him.

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