Frederick Soddy

Frederick Soddy (1877-1956), British chemist and Nobel laureate.

Soddy was born in Eastbourne, England, and educated at Eastbourne College, University College of Wales, and the University of Oxford. He was a lecturer in physical chemistry and radioactivity at the University of Glasgow from 1904 to 1914 and professor of chemistry at Oxford from 1919 to 1936, at which time he retired from academic life. With the British physicist Ernest Rutherford he began investigating radioactive transformations of atomic nuclei and eventually developed a theory of atomic structure. Soddy is particularly known for his investigations of the origin and nature of isotopes, for which he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry. His writings include such classic scientific works as Radioactivity (1904), Interpretation of the Atom (1932), The Story of Atomic Energy (1949), and Atomic Transmutation (1953) and works of a political-economic nature, including Cartesian Economies (1922) and Role of Money (1934).