Radioactivity and Its Nineteenth-Century Background

Abstract

One can begin to view the origins of radioactivity in a perspective broader than the merely experimental by considering aspects of the preceding period. In explaining such phenomena as electrical and magnetic actions, optical properties of matter and the behaviour of light, and the nature of chemical matter, connexions between all these were sought. It is pertinent to enquire whether the nineteenth-century unifying ideals relating matter, ether, and electricity were influential in the union of physics and chemistry that was radioactivity. In doing so, one may discern threads and themes of ideas and speculations, more or less closely linked to experimental facts and programmes. Our three threads (chemical, physical, and chemical physics) which converge towards the watershed of radioactivity are linked to three which emerge beyond it (cosmical, Proutian, and universal). These differ in importance but their influence upon the early workers on radioactivity, such as Marie Curie and Ernest Rutherford, is detectable. The case of Frederick Soddy is more debatable; one views with interest his contemporary claim that the transmutation theory of radioactivity was entirely independent of electronic theories of matter.