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Soddy at Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

A. D. Cruickshank
A. D. Cruickshank
Affiliation:
Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, Sussex BN1 9RF
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Extract

Frederick Soddy's productive pure research ended with the outbreak of World War I. Before that time Soddy was internationally acknowledged as a great scientist. He had, with Rutherford, produced the atomic disintegration theory and, in association with Ramsay, had proved it experimentally. He had been one of the first men to elucidate the nature of isotopes, and it was he who gave them their name. After the war he was dismissed as a man who had forsaken his science to propound wild theories of monetary reform.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 1979 , pp. 277 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1979

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References

NOTES

1 General biographical details have been obtained from the following sources: F. Soddy, ‘Extracts from Royal Society, “Personal records of F. Soddy”’, Soddy Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Catalogue Number 2 (Hereafter SCB 2); Soddy, F., ‘Nobel prizeman in chemistry 1921 (awarded 1922)’, 7 07 1950Google Scholar, (SCB 2); Fleck, A., ‘Frederick Soddy’, Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1957, 3, 203–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleck, A., ‘Frederick Soddy’ (Obituary), Nature, 1956, 178, 893CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paneth, F., ‘A tribute to F. Soddy’, Nature, 1957, 180, 1085–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bowen, E. J., ‘Note on Frederick Soddy’, 29 01 1974Google Scholar (SCB 1); Brewer, F. M., ‘Frederick Soddy’, in Howorth, M. (ed.), An appreciation of Professor Frederick Soddy, London, 1956, pp. 12–15 (SCB 28).Google Scholar

2 Soddy, F., ‘Extracts’, op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

3 Testimonials from Odling, Harcourt, and Ramsay are in SCB 5. See also Soddy, F., ‘Extracts’, op. cit. (1)Google Scholar; and ‘Just fifty years on’, lecture given to the Institute of Atomic Information for the Layman, 28 February 1953 (SCB 26).

4 Ibid.

5 See, for example, F. Soddy, ‘Resumé of original investigations, 1900–1913, of Frederick Soddy’ (SCB 3); ‘The joint researches of Sir William Ramsay and Frederick Soddy’, March 1946 (SCB 2); ‘The origins of the conception of isotopes’, Nobel Lecture delivered at Stockholm, 12 December 1922 (Stockholm, 1923). For biographical and scientific details (and further bibliography) see Trenn, T. J., ‘Soddy, Frederick’, in Gillispie, C. C. (ed.), Dictionary of scientific biography, New York, 1976, xiii, 504–9.Google Scholar I have written my own commentary on this work: Cruickshank, A. D., ‘Soddy, science, and society’, University of Oxford BA (Chemistry) Part II dissertation, 1976.Google Scholar

6 ‘Professer Soddy’, The crucible, 1919, 2, 17–19Google Scholar (SCB 15); Williamson, W. T. H., ‘Soddy's war-work at Aberdeen’Google Scholar (SCB 32); for a recent study see Page, Kenneth R., ‘Frederick Soddy: the Aberdeen interlude’, Aberdeen University review, 1979, 48, 127–48.Google Scholar

7 Brewer, F. M., ‘Statement’, undated typescript in SCB 28.Google Scholar

8 E. J. Bowen, private communication.

9 Brewer, F. M., ‘Frederick Soddy’, op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

10 Oxford University gazette, 1919, 49, 283.Google Scholar

11 Paneth, F., op. cit. (1), ‘Tribute’.Google Scholar

12 F. Soddy, ‘The wider aspects of the discovery of atomic disintegration—contrasting experimental facts with the mathematical theories’, address to the Fourth conference of Nobel prizewinners, 30 June 1954, (London, 1954) (SCB 44).

13 F. Soddy to High Commissioner for India, 19 August 1937 (SCB 20).

14 Correspondance between F. Soddy and Stanford and Co Ltd is in SCB 21.

15 E. J. Bowen, private communication.

16 Ibid.

17 Soddy, F., ‘Science and the state’, presidential address to Aberdeen University Scientific Society, in Soddy, F., Science and life, London, 1920, chapter IV.Google Scholar

18 Soddy, F., ‘The public support of scientific work’, address to the National Union of Scientific Workers, Scientific worker, 1920, 1, 15–20 (SCB 44).Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Brewer, F. M., ‘Statement’, op. cit. (7).Google Scholar

22 E. J. Bowen, private communication.

23 Soddy, F., ‘Petition—To the King's Most Excellent Majesty in Council—The humble petition of Frederick Soddy’, 19 09 1927Google Scholar (SCB 18). ‘Reply of the University of Oxford to the Petition dated 19 September 1927—To the King's Most Excellent Majesty in Council—The humble petition of Frederick Soddy’, 21 March 1928 (SCB 18).

24 Soddy, F., ‘Extracts’, op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

25 Quoted in Brewer, F. M., ‘Frederick Soddy’, op. cit. (1)Google Scholar, and ‘Statement’, op. cit. (7).

26 Bowen, E. J., ‘Note’, op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

27 Soddy, F., ‘Extracts’, op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

28 Soddy, F., ‘Scientific and sociological—the social abuse of science’, lecture delivered at Aberdeen, 1 11 1918 (SCB 114).Google Scholar

29 Toynbee, A. J., A study of history, 18 vols., Oxford, 1962.Google Scholar

30 Werskey, P. G., ‘British scientists and outsider politics, 1931–45’, Science studies, 1971, 1, 67–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Soddy, F., ‘Extracts’, op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

32 The daily telegraph, 3 12 1935.Google Scholar Material pertaining to this conflict is in SCB 10.

33 Ibid.

34 Rose, H. & Rose, S., Science and society, Harmondsworth, 1971, 52–4.Google Scholar

35 Quoted in ‘Professor Soddy against the Government—Labour instincts are right’, Forward, 26 09 1931, p. 7.Google Scholar

36 Douglas, C. H., Economic democracy: credit power and democracy, London, 1920.Google Scholar Soddy's economic thinking is more fully detailed in the article by T. J. Trenn, this issue.

37 Soddy, F., The inversion of science, and a scheme of scientific reformation, London, 1924, p. 10.Google Scholar

38 Brewer, F. M., ‘Statement’, op. cit. (7).Google Scholar

39 Soddy, F., ‘Summation of infinite harmonic series’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1941–1942, 179A, 377–86Google Scholar; ‘The three infinite harmonic series and their sums’, ibid., 1943–4, 182A, 113–29; ‘The kiss precise’, Nature, 1936, 137, 1021Google Scholar; ‘The hexlet’, ibid., p. 958. Soddy's mathematical notebooks and the card on which he wrote his instructions to his executors are in SCB 46–9.

40 Nature, 1932, 130, 573–4.Google Scholar

41 Soddy, F. to Hinshelwood, N., 6 02 1937Google Scholar (SCB 236), and other material in SCB 236.

42 Ibid.

43 Soddy, F. to Howorth, M., 22 02 1955 (SCB 29).Google Scholar

44 Soddy, F. to Howorth, M., 25 12 1952 (SCB 29).Google Scholar

45 Clark, C., ‘The aberration of genius’, The tablet, 13 10 1956, pp. 298–300Google Scholar (SCB 45).

46 Brewer, F. M., ‘Statement’, op. cit. (7).Google Scholar