Frederick Soddy

Frederick Soddy
Born	(1877-09-02)2 September 1877 Eastbourne, Sussex, England
Died	22 September 1956(1956-09-22) (aged 79) Brighton, Sussex, England
Nationality	British
Fields	Radiochemistry Economics
Institutions	McGill University (1900–1903) University of Glasgow (1904–1914) University of Aberdeen (1914–1919) University of Oxford (1919–1936)
Alma mater	Aberystwyth University Merton College, Oxford
Academic advisors	Ernest Rutherford
Doctoral students	Satoyasu Iimori
Known for	Nuclear transmutation Discovery of isotopes Fajans and Soddy law Thermoeconomics Ergosophy Soddy circles Soddy's hexlet
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1921) Soddy crater Fellow of the Royal Society
Spouse	Winifred Beilby

Frederick Soddy FRS (2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956) was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements.

Soddy was born at 5 Bolton Road, Eastbourne, England. He went to school at Eastbourne College, before going on to study at University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and at Merton College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1898 with first class honors in chemistry. He was a researcher at Oxford from 1898 to 1900.

In 1900 he became a demonstrator in chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he worked with Ernest Rutherford on radioactivity. He and Rutherford realized that the anomalous behaviour of radioactive elements was because they decayed into other elements. This decay also produced alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. When radioactivity was first discovered, no one was sure what the cause was. It needed careful work by Soddy and Rutherford to prove that atomic transmutation was in fact occurring.

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