Frederick Soddy

Frederick Soddy (1877 to 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, and who proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements. Born in Eastbourne and a graduate of Merton College, Oxford, he worked with Rutherford on radioactivity at McGill University in Montreal from 1900, and in 1903 showed with William Ramsay at University College London that the decay of radium produces helium. In 1913 he described the radioactive displacement law, found at about the same time by Kazimierz Fajans, and named the concept of isotopes. His work with his research assistant Ada Hitchins showed that uranium decays to radium, and in 1918 he and John Cranston announced an isotope of the element later named protactinium. He became the first Dr. Lee's Professor of Chemistry at Oxford in 1919 and received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Described as a polymath who mastered chemistry, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, finance and economics, he also wrote on monetary reform.