Frederick Soddy, 1877-1956
Alexander Fleck
1957
, 203-216, published 1 November
3
1957
Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc.
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FREDERICK SODDY
Born Eastbourne 2 September 1877
Died Brighton 26 September 1956
F
r e d e r ic k
S
o d d y
was a complex personality and if we are to arrive at any
degree of understanding of its aspects, I believe we have to give more than
usual place to the background of his early life. It has been my conception of
his life that there was really four chapters in it—
To 1900—his formative years,
From 1900 to 1911—Montreal and the disintegration theory,
From 1912 to 1918—Glasgow and isotopes,
Onwards from 1919—Oxford and his social outlook.
His
F
o r m a t iv e
Y
e a r s
Soddy’s father was a relatively successful corn merchant who was 55 years
old when Frederick was born, the seventh and last child. His father retained
the inherited family tradition of deep religious feeling, consistently and regu
larly shown by public worship. Soddy’s grandfather had aspirations to be a
missionary to the South Sea Islanders and had sailed for the Antipodes only
to be captured by a French privateer in the year 1798. Calvinistic sermons,
to which he was compelled to listen, made a deep impression on Soddy’s
memories of his boyhood. These sermons were always extreme in their views
and practically always contained dire threats of what might follow any ten
dency to leanings towards the Catholic Faith. Soddy disagreed with those
views very deeply, but for understanding him it should be remembered that
he was brought up in this family tradition stemming from his grandfather’s
time and in his own case, from his childhood. An ‘evangel’ of some sort was a
usual and not a rare guest in the household. And so in the approach he was
liable to make to things in general, I have regarded his basic method of going
hard at an idea without regard to the finer feelings of others, as being to a
considerable extent derived from the atmosphere of family Galvinistic out
look to which he was accustomed in his early years. Truth as it was conceived
was the essential thing. The method of its presentation, even at the expense
of other people’s feelings, was unimportant.
In his early education he was appreciative of the successful efforts of a lady
teacher who eliminated a tendency to stammer, and then it was at East
bourne College under the guidance of a science master, R. E. Hughes, only
recently down from Jesus College, Oxford, with a First Class Honours
Degree, that he showed interest in chemistry and displayed a science type of
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mentality which had been wholly absent from the family in either of its
previous or present members.
At the age of 17 he published his first chemical paper, as co-author with
Hughes, following Bereton Baker on the behaviour of dry ammonia and dry
carbon dioxide. The description is short and is published in the Chemical
News of 1894 (1).* By this time he had made the acquaintance of H. C. H.
(later Sir Harold) Carpenter, F.R.S. Because of his relative youth and a
desire to obtain the Merton College Open Science Postmastership, it was
decided that a year at Aberystwyth before going to Oxford would be helpful
and by an unfortunate difficulty over Latin, this year was extended by an
additional term. In the meantime he had won the 1895 Postmastership. By
1896 he was in Merton College, Oxford, renewing his acquaintance with
Carpenter and was in contact with J. E. Marsh, later F.R.S., with whom
Hughes had been collaborating.
From his Oxford days, first as an undergraduate and then during a post
graduate year, there are three matters worthy of note. He was active in the
Oxford University Junior Scientific Society and became its Chemical Secre
tary. In that Society’s Journal he published a thorough and, indeed for a piece
of undergraduate work, a very remarkable paper on the life and work of
Victor Meyer. The third matter to record is that he showed practical interest
in organic chemistry during the year after graduating by working with Marsh
on a suggested structure of camphor.
His normal academic undergraduate work came to an end in 1898 when he
graduated First Class in the Honours School of Natural Science. Sir William
Ramsay, with whom he was later to collaborate in an important investiga
tion, was his external examiner—that was his first introduction to him.
His own record of the further year at Oxford after graduation is that he
attempted various lines of research which did not yield any worthwhile
results. At the age of 23 he considered himself equipped to apply for the
Professorship of Chemistry then vacant in Toronto. With one of his charac
teristic decisions he decided he would follow up his application by a personal
visit. His Toronto visit was fruitless for its initial objective, but he then
decided to visit Montreal, attracted, I believe, by the high reputation of the
laboratory equipment available at McGill University. He accepted a junior
demonstratorship in the Chemistry Department at £100 per annum, but he
was made economically stable by the generosity of his father. This was in
May 1900 and he did not meet Rutherford until September of that year.
M
o n t r e a l
a n d
t h e
d is in t e g r a t io n
t h e o r y
So far as Soddy is concerned there are no publications in 1901, but the
joint Rutherford and Soddy papers start in 1902 and are essentially con
cerned with thorium, thorium X and thorium emanation. The collaboration
* The numbers in parenthesis refer to the numbered items in the bibliography at the end of this
memoir.
2 0 4
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