Chemistry: 1921

Soddy, Frederick (1877-1956), a British chemist, received the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on atomic structure. He and New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford showed that radioactive elements disintegrate into other chemical elements as they emit radioactivity. Soddy gave the name isotopes to atoms of the same element with different weights.

Soddy was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, and studied at Oxford University. He taught at Oxford, Aberdeen University, and the University of Glasgow.

Contributor: Bruce R. Wheaton, Ph.D., Director, Inventory of Sources for History of Twentieth-Century Physics.