Soddy, Frederick 1877-1965
English radio chemist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Eastbourne, Sussex, he studied at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and at Oxford. In 1900, after two years research at Oxford, he was appointed demonstrator in chemistry at McGill University, Montreal, where he and Ernest Rutherford studied radioactivity. Working in London and Glasgow, he demonstrated that radium produces helium when it decays, and that uranium decays into radium. His principal achievement was the discovery of isotopes, which was of fundamental importance to all physics and chemistry. In 1914 he was appointed to the chair at Aberdeen, where he was employed on chemical research connected with World War I. Moving to Oxford in 1919 as Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry (1919-1936), Soddy reorganized the laboratory facilities and the teaching syllabus. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry. After his retirement he wrote on ethics, politics and economics, urging fellow scientists to restrict their research to areas which had peaceful applications.

Bibliography: George B Kauffman, Frederick Soddy (1986)