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Frederick
Soddy
Nobel Prize in
Chemistry 1921
A Talk by
Professor M. A.
Whitehead | |
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It is interesting
that contrary personalities often associate to produce stimulating and
sometimes brilliant joint works. Gilbert and
Sullivan, Watson and Crick, Hartree and Fock, Kohn and Sham are
examples. Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford were so
dissimilar in background, training, education and personality that it is a
wonder that they ever worked together,
let alone that their joint work was to yield the theory of radioactivity
and the structure of the atom.
Both were
Scientists Supreme, both searchers after Truth both dedicated to
understanding and using Research for the Common Good. Yet
while Rutherford was Knighted and buried in Westminster Abbey, Soddy who
was also interested in Education was
ignored by the Establishment, attacked by other Scientists and died in
obscurity. The Why and
Wherefore of this
will be discussed and another side Soddy's character unveiled such as
Soddy’s generosity to all who knew him.
One of his
last acts was to visit his old laboratories and give handsome gifts to the
laboratory stewards and assistants who
had served him for twenty years. Let us also remember his defence of
Universities, so much under attack today by
the powers of darkness, the governments and big business:
Were all the
powers of darkness in dominion over her, yet is the University a Holy
Place where year by year congregate the Pilgrims in
the greatness and generosity of Youth, ‘to learn what none may teach, to
seek what none may reach’ to perpetuate the
Vision of youth after youth itself has sped. When this ceases to be true
then, and only then, will Ancient Universities have
grown old.
So at the end as
at the beginning, his faith and Science and Education all come together to
give a Mythic Vision for us all.
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