The Discovery of Radioactivity

Lawrence Badash

Citation: Phys. Today 49(2), 21 (1996); doi: 10.1063/1.881485

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.881485
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 THE DISCOVERY OF
RADIOACTIVITY
O ne hundred years ago,
several remarkable dis-
coveries were crowded into
Chance favored Becquerel with cloudy
days that hid his phosphorescent uranium
Becquerel was immedi-
ately challenged by this
question. In fact, he was
the short space of ten years: salts from the sun. Further experiments ideally suited to answer it.
x rays in 1895, radioactivity Not only was he expert in
the next year, the electron in led him to conclude that the salts emitted the investigation of various
1897, quantum theory in invisible, penetrating rays independent of luminescent effects, a com-
1900 and special relativity in mon activity in physics labo-
1905. Individually, each had their luminescence. ratories of the 19th century,
enormous significance. Col- but he had studied the phos-
lectively, they heralded what phorescence of some ura-
we now know as "modern Lawrence Badash nium compounds in particu-
physics." Practitioners of the lar. He also was skilled in
old "classical physics" had no anticipation of the momen- laboratory applications of photography. And, like most
tous change about to grip their science. Indeed, a few physicists, he sought a better understanding of the na-
even claimed that all the great discoveries had already ture of matter, so perhaps the mechanics of phosphores-
been made and that their profession would be reduced cence would bring him closer to reaching this final,
merely to measurements of greater and greater accu- philosophical goal.
racy. No doubt some discoveries lay in the next decimal
place, as illustrated by the 1894 revelation of the rare gas An expert on uranium phosphorescence
argon during very accurate measurements of the constitu- In the second half of the 19th century, Henri's father,
ents of air. But a career centered only on making increas- Edmond Becquerel, who lived from 1820 to 1891, was the
ingly precise measurements would not have appealed to leading authority in Europe on the subject of the phos-
most physicists. phorescence of solids. It was an important field, made
Of course, they were spared such labor by this second prominent by Robert Wilhelm Bunsen's and Gustav Robert
scientific revolution (the first one having been that Kirchhoff's recent spectroscopic analyses. ("Fluorescence"
sparked by Copernicus, Galileo and Newton). Most of the is defined as the emission of light only during stimulation
discoveries whose centennials we are celebrating in this by external radiation. "Phosphorescence" persists after
ten-year period were immediately recognized as impor- the external radiation ceases. "Luminescence" is the um-
tant, and all their discoverers became Nobel laureates brella term.) Edmond was drawn to the investigation of
(although Einstein was honored for the photoelectric effect, uranium salts because of their exceptionally bright phos-
not relativity). But recognition was not always instanta- phorescence and their interesting spectra. One of his
neous, and in the case of radioactivity even its discov- contributions was to show that the uranic series of salts
erer—Antoine Henri Becquerel—went on to other work is phosphorescent and that the uranous series is not. His
before realizing the implications of his own discovery. son, Henri, began publishing on phosphorescence in 1883.
Born in 1852, Becquerel (see figure 1) was the third and wrote twenty papers on this and related areas of
in a line of Becquerels who held the chair of applied study over the next 13 years, being attracted especially
physics at what is today the National Museum of Natural to the effects of infrared radiation. Like his father, Henri
History in Paris (see Figure 2). Like his grandfather and was fascinated by uranium salts, and he examined their
father before him, he was a member of the French Acad- absorption bands in both infrared and visible regions.
emy of Sciences and customarily attended its weekly Although uranium and its compounds interested the
meetings. It was there, at a session on 20 January 1896, Becquerels, the study of these substances remained in
that he heard mathematical physicist Henri Poincare something of a scientific backwater throughout the 19th
describe the silhouette photographs of living bones taken century. Uranium had been discovered in 1789 by a
recently by German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen. German analytical chemist, Martin Klaproth, while he
(See the article on Rontgen by Howard H. Seliger in had been examining pitchblendes from Saxony. Its
PHYSICS TODAY, November 1995, page 25.) The invisible name was chosen in honor of William Herschel's discov-
x rays appeared to issue from the area of a glass vacuum ery of the planet Uranus in 1781 (a practice continued
tube made fluorescent when struck by a beam of cathode in the 20th century with the naming of neptunium and
rays. Thinking by analogy was (and still is) common plutonium). Not until 1841, however, was it recognized
practice in science, so Poincare wondered aloud if such that Klaproth had obtained only the oxide. Eugene Peli-
radiation was emitted by other luminescent bodies. got, a noted French chemist, then succeeded in separating
the metal.
Attention was again directed to uranium when Dmitri
LAWRENCE BADASH is a professor of history of science at the Mendeleev formulated his periodic table in 1869 and
University of California, Santa Barbara. showed it to be the heaviest element. But in an age of
burgeoning chemical production, few applications for it

1996 American Institute of Physics, S-0O31-9228-9602-010-8 FEBRUARY 1996 PHYSICS TODAY 21

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 ANTOINE-HENRI BECQUEREL as a young man.
(Photo courtesy of Saclay Center for Nuclear Studies,
Atomic Energy Commission.) FIGURE 1

were found. Compounds were tried as toning agents in

photography, as dyes or stains for leather and wool and
as mordants for silk and wool, and attempts were made
with the metal to form an alloy with steel. The greatest
use was in the ceramic and glass industries, in which
uranium was valued for making colored glazes and colored
clear glass. By varying the percentage of the salt used,
one could get yellow, orange, brown, green or black.
Uranium glass found some peripheral applications in
science, where its reaction to electrical discharges was
used to amaze and delight audiences at popular lectures.
Around 1860, Heinrich Geissler made some of his famous
vacuum tubes with the glass, and "the Gassiot cascade,"
constructed by Peter Gassiot of London, was even more
spectacular. (See figure 3.)
Thus, by 1896, uranium was not much of a rarity. It
had a few industrial uses, and some scientists took an
interest in its luminescent properties. The metal had been
separated, though in small quantity and questionable
purity, and it was not easily obtained. Uranium salts
were a minor article of commerce. But there had been
no hints that uranium was steadily emitting unseen,
penetrating radiations. Becquerel was rare among physi- dous public interest, relied heavily on photography for its
cists in having uranium crystals in his laboratory inven- fame. By far the greatest scientific use of this tool came
tory. And radioactivity as a phenomenon was somewhat in the century's last two decades, which suggests the
unusual in straddling so equally the border between phys- impact of dry, gelatin-emulsion plates.
ics and chemistry. By 1896 Becquerel would probably have had at his
disposal dry photographic plates of relatively good quality,
Photographic tools uniform emulsion and long shelf life. Although we know
Becquerel discovered radioactivity using photographic little about his familiarity with the techniques of process-
plates. Fortunately, photography was a well-developed ing, his father was well versed in this area and it is likely
tool by that time. A key advance, in midcentury, had been that Henri was also adequately informed. The son did
the development of dry photographic plates. Before then, not hesitate to use photographic methods to seek possible
the light-sensitive silver compound had been bound to a penetrating radiation associated with phosphorescent ma-
glass backing by collodion, a substance that had to be kept terials, and he developed his own plates in the darkroom
moist throughout exposure and development. The high- of his laboratory. (His training in photography probably
speed exposure compensated for the inconvenience that came from the older generation, for, as Alfred Romer of
collodion entailed. In 1856, a company in Birmingham, Saint Lawrence University has pointed out, Henri re-
England, produced the first dry plates to enjoy real popu- ported an experiment using a daguerreotype plate, by then
larity: The company's method involved pouring a pre- an antique implement.) Luminescence, uranium, photog-
servative coating of gelatin over the sensitized collodion, raphy—Becquerel was in the right place at the right time.
filling the pores while they were wet and open, and then But he still might have failed to recognzize radioactivity
drying the plates. The dry plates could be purchased as a phenomenon separate from phosphorescence if he
boxed and ready for use. Before long, silver bromide had not been an accomplished physicist.
replaced silver nitrate and silver iodide, while gelatin
emulsions replaced the various forms of collodion. Toward Discovery: a process, not an event
the end of the century, celluloid cut film and nitrocellulose Becquerel's working hypothesis was that a body had to
roll film were introduced, but the revolution in plates was luminesce to emit penetrating radiation such as Rontgen
already completed. had found. His technique was to wrap a photographic
Photography entered the laboratory around the mid- plate in light-tight black paper, position the mineral on
dle of the 19th century, being used to complement the the plate, and leave the experiment on his window sill
microscope, telescope and balloon (for aerial photography), (the leftmost window on the second floor of the museum
and to capture events such as sound waves, flying bullets, seen in figure 2), where sunlight would stimulate the
drop splashes, the motion of animals and lightning. mineral to glow. At a meeting of the Academy of Sciences
Rontgen's encounter with x rays, which evoked tremen- on 24 February 1896, he claimed success, reporting that

22 FEBRUARY 1996 PHYSICS TODAY

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several materials—in particular, phosphorescent crystals
of potassium uranyl sulfate—emitted rays that penetrated
thick black paper and exposed the photographic plate.
This exposure was little more than a smudge. To refine
the results and to make them more attractive to others,
Becquerel also placed coins and other thin, metallic
objects under the crystals, producing interesting silhou-
ettes and showing their penetrating power. For example,
the bas relief seen in the image of a coin in figure 4 is
created by the greater penetration through thinner regions
of the object.
On Wednesday and Thursday, 26 and 27 February,
Becquerel prepared several arrays of crystals and photo-
graphic plates. The Parisian winter, however, brought
half a week of overcast skies, forcing Becquerel to postpone
the experiments; he felt that he needed strong sunlight.
The plates rested in a dark drawer until Sunday, 1 March,
when Becquerel developed them, "expecting to find very
weak images. To the contrary," he wrote in his memoirs,
"the silhouettes appeared with great intensity."
The following day, on 2 March 1896, Becquerel re-
ported to the Academy of Sciences that the potassium
uranium sulfate crystals could be stimulated to emit the
new rays by diffuse daylight through a thin cloud cover,
as well as by reflected and refracted direct sunlight. He
also described using different thicknesses of copper foil to
examine the absorption of the rays. But the most as-
tounding result that Becquerel offered was that stimula-
tion of the crystals by sunlight immediately before or
during the experiment was apparently not necessary.
But why had Becquerel bothered to develop those
plates, which he thought were faintly exposed at best?
His behavior has been explained as thoroughness: Jean
Becquerel has suggested that his father planned to resume
his experiments and wished to use fresh plates, so why
not develop the old ones anyway? The explanation prof-
fered by G. E. M. Jauncey (in a 1946 paper in the Ameri-
can Journal of Physics) is "impatience after waiting four
days for the sun to shine." Yet other reasons, suggested
by Romer, are "simple thrift... or an overriding curiosity."
We can dismiss the belief that Becquerel planned to
resume his experiments on that Sunday: Meteorological
records indicate that the day was less sunny than the
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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY in Paris.
On the second floor, at the
left-hand side of the building, is
the window in which
Becquerel exposed uranium
compounds to sunlight,
mistakenly believing that the
invisible penetrating radiation,
which we know today as
radioactivity, was associated
with phosphorescence. The
bust in the alcove depicts
naturalist Georges Cuvier, long
associated with both the
museum and the French
Academy of Sciences. (Photo
obtained in 1965, courtesy of
Yves Le Grand, who occupied
the chair at the museum once
held by Becquerel.) FIGURE 2
average of the preceding four days. Indeed, every hourly
reading between 0500 and 1900 shows that the nebulosity,
that is, the fraction of sky covered by clouds, was ten
tenths (see figure 5).
A better explanation for Becquerel's activity is that
he wanted to have sufficient material to report at the next
day's session of the academy. In previous experiments he
had already found, or so he believed, that weak illumina-
tion triggered his crystals somewhat. Perhaps he thought
that these newly prepared plates had been exposed to
some diffuse daylight, if not a short period of sunlight,
before he placed them in the dark drawer. Thus, even if
he could not describe many additional experiments, he
might furnish evidence of the connection between the
intensity of the photographic image and the intensity and
duration of phosphorescence.
That he found the plates as blackened as they would
have been had the crystals phosphoresced continuously,
and that he recognized the significance of his surprising
observation, shows that the discovery of radioactivity
was not simply a happy accident but also a product of
genuine scientific talent. Becquerel's example is comfort-
ing to us: His genius emerged because he mistakenly
believed in a connection between the penetrating rays and
phosphorescence, and because he felt compelled to speak
at the academy's meeting. Folly and pride sometimes are
rewarded.
Weak hypothesis, strong results
Though a major step, this event does not deserve to be
called the discovery of radioactivity. The discovery was a
process, not an instantaneous occurrence, for even at this
point Becquerel had not sufficiently localized the phe-
nomenon. No doubt Becquerel was a skilled and ingenious
experimenter. However, in this early research he was not
sufficiently meticulous to exclude extraneous influences
and to see that some of his experimental results could
bear more than one explanation. Thus, he often concluded
that his experiments proved uranium rays to possess a
certain physical property, only to have it shown later that
the effect was due to another cause. Indeed, his investi-
gations are particularly interesting for their many false
trails, unreproducible results and misinterpreted effects.
FEBRUARY 1996 PHYSICS TODAY 23
 ELECTROLUMINESCENCE from
this Gassiot cascade delighted
and mystified 19th century
audiences. The cascade
consisted of a large goblet of
uranium glass, lined with tin
foil. When the goblet was
placed on a metal plate,
covered with a bell jar, and
brought to the proper degree
of evacuation, a machine for
generating static electricity that
was connected to the foil and
plate caused, in the words of Working in a dark room, he placed different minerals atop
historian E. Newton Harvey, photographic plates in an opaque cardboard box. When
"spectacular electroluminescent developed five hours later, the plates showed strong
effects . . . in the gas which images in samples in which the crystals lay directly on
seemed to flow over the edge the emulsion and less intense images in those in which
of the goblet." (Photo from the crystals were separated from the emulsion by sheets
the frontispiece to A. Privat of aluminum and glass. Besides showing attenuation,
Deschanel, Elementary Treatise the samples involving aluminum and glass also indi-
on Natural Philosoplry, vol. 3 cated that chemical action was not the explanation for
[Blackie & Son, London, the photographic smudges. Nor could the smudges result
1888].) FIGURE 3 from the luminous radiation, because the phosophores-
cence of uranium salts is perceptible only for about 0.01
second, too short a time to expose a plate. Becquerel
therefore suggested that phosphorescent bodies might give
off an invisible emission that lasts much longer than the
visible radiation.
Even before Rbntgen's discovery of x rays, it had
become almost a standard procedure for scientists explor-
ing various types of radiation to perform some of the
experiments that Rontgen conducted to determine the
properties of x rays. Becquerel followed suit, as was only
logical, because he believed that his own rays were similar
to x rays. He only had to substitute a layer of uranium
salts for a cathode-ray tube, for example, to show that the
separated gold leaves of an electroscope were made to fall.
Yet, his erroneous conclusions inexorably led him to fur- Having established this electrical property, he next exam-
ther experiments, which often revealed the true nature of ined whether the rays were reflected and refracted—and
the phenomenon. This uneven progress is perhaps the he claimed they were. This conclusion, however, would
most striking facet in the story of the discovery of radio- be corrected by Rutherford some three years later.
activity. But it must be understood that few scientists Through March and the succeeding months of 1896,
are able to avoid false trails to the extent of a Marie Curie Becquerel found that those crystals kept in darkness
or an Ernest Rutherford; Becquerel was typical of scien- retained their ability to expose a photographic plate.
tists, not atypical. Surely, he felt, this was a remarkable example of long-lived
He recognized that the next step must be to determine phosphorescence. But he was at a loss to explain the
if any light at all was necessary to stimulate the crystals. equally intense images produced by non-phosphorescent

EARLY IMAGES MADE BY

"URANIUM RAYS." T o
get such images,
Becquerel placed an
object between uranium
salts and a photographic
plate, a: French coin.
Different penetrations
through different
thicknesses revealed the
bust in bas relief, b:
Maltese cross. FIGURE 4

24 11 Apr
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2013 to 200.233.31.241. TODAY
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 P A R J S ..(. PARS-. >E. CLOUD COVER IN PARIS was very heavy from Wednesday
«n _
afternoon through Sunday (26 February to 1 March 1896), a
..NEBUL051IE-, _
period when Becquerel wanted to expose his uranium
SuiJ VEB" ftr SOT suH • Tuts" - •

compounds to sunlight. He thus discovered that the

Vutts re Hit ret 56 Mi
"•? sec
N it, ZS 26 *7 28 If -1 Z A 5" compounds darkened photographic plates even without seeing
the light of day. Data recorded in the table are for nebulosity,
'71 0 J> - *- </«. io /to o_ fa. •1° •> the fraction of the sky covered by clouds, measured in units of
one tenth. (Table from part 2, on observations, of the Annales
a 0 0 •lo 4O •10
0 <^" 40 4.O 40
du Bureau Central Meteorologique de France for the year 1896.)
s FIGURE 5
•IO AO a •io 4.O
7-- 0 0 0 AD

?: 0. 0 V, ^ AQ. Wo 4O 4o c 10 < 9

9 ' _ - 0. 0 z 0 40 40 - stJ V 4o a '10

later overturned. Science can be—and perhaps usually

Jo -to 'lo 40 •lo
0 0 5" /I /IP -/£> 10.
is—a confused and confusing undertaking; certainly the
i i dO
logical progression presented in many published accounts
A* .. 0 0.
7 •to. 4O 4O JO
is an order imposed in retrospect by the writer.
0 0 z. i. 4* ^ - 4o .1 4 o i .3 In the case of radioactivity, the transition from "nor-
mal science" to a revolutionary new way of looking at
« . . 0 0
a. 'i...r. w " 0 40 40 .6 4a. .9- nature, a paradigm change, was still incomplete. This
climax would not occur until 1902-03, when Rutherford
_. a _ .0. . y •re 4.0. '•?- -to .7 ^~ and Frederick Soddy would explain radioactivity as the
r_ spontaneous transmutation of elements. For the next two
.0. 0 J. _a £ ip 4O $ -10 6
years, the topic of uranium radiation had an uncertain
1.«<£...
' a Jk .0. do lo -— 4.O .to t.o to. 7 future. Becquerel published seven papers in 1896 on what
Marie Curie later named "radioactivity," he penned but
i —
a. a. ,.£>. 0- 4.O AP_ 40 <1o. 4a ...s. two papers the next year and he wrote none at all in 1898.
He had run out of ideas. Only a few others saw Bec-
::: -0. .J> a. •4Q • -
7o'io i •fj} i. querel's finding as a worthwhile subject to investigate. In
London, working at the same time as Becquerel, Silvanus
i ... a a it •iO - •
4CL 7 40_ to. 7 P. Thompson independently observed the strange action
of uranium rays and named the phenomenon "hyper-phos-
uranous sulfate. This discovery led him on a new path phorescence." But when George Gabriel Stokes informed
of investigation. Since uranium nitrate ceases to lumi- him of Becquerel's publications, Thompson left the field.
nesce when dissolved or melted in its water of crystal- Other investigators tried to extend Becquerel's work.
lization, Becquerel, in darkness, heated a crystal in a Electrical engineering professor A. F. McKissick, of the
sealed glass tube, protecting it even from the light of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University.),
alcohol flame. He then allowed it to recrystallize in placed several substances, including a uranium compound,
darkness. All phosphorescence had been destroyed in this directly on photographic emulsions and reported that
process, yet the salt still produced results on a photo- granulated sugar was the most powerful such substance.
graphic plate as strong as crystals exposed to light. In- A Japanese physicist, Hanichi Muraoka, found that glow-
deed, Becquerel admitted the anomalous behavior of his worms emitted some sort of penetrating radiation. In
samples: All salts of uranium emitted the invisible ra- both cases, though, chemical action was the culprit.
diation, while other phosphorescent bodies did not. Given the level of much science in the US at the turn
Finally, on 18 May, Becquerel announced that the of the century, the mistaken interpretation by McKissick
element uranium, not any of its compounds, was the is understandable. Muraoka's case is more surprising,
source of the emission. He had confirmed this insight however, as he was trained in Germany; fortunately, he
with the commercial uranium powder that he had long corrected his own mistake a year later, the clue being that
had in his laboratory. Uranium metal, which he obtained the glowworms had to be kept moist for the radiation
from Henri Moissan, a Parisian chemist who isolated effect to continue.
fluorine and who also developed the electric furnace, Better known and more accomplished physicists also
proved to be the most active of all forms, as measured by investigated what were then called "uranium rays" or
both photographic and electrical methods. The electro- "Becquerel rays." Lord Kelvin (formerly Sir William
scope, for example, was discharged by a cast disk of Thomson) and two of his research fellows at the University
uranium metal several times faster than by a sample of of Glasgow, John Carruthers Beattie and Maryan
the salt. Becquerel noted that this emission from uranium Smoluchowski, looked at electrical and absorption phe-
was probably the first example of a metal having the nomena. They found that the effect of the rays on elec-
surprising phenomenon of long-lived invisible phosphores- trical conduction in the air, measured by their quadrant
cence. His dogged attachment to an optical interpretation electrometer, increased with applied voltage up to a point,
was also long-lived. where it effectively leveled off. But they stopped short of
recognizing this as a saturation current, even though J. J.
Observed but not yet explained Thomson and his student Rutherford had almost half a
With Becquerel's recognition that the new rays emerged year earlier shown that x rays produce ions and the
from the element uranium, and with the unstated but current can become saturated.
perhaps implicit consequence that this was an atomic At a secondary school in Wolfenbiittel, Germany,
phenomenon, we may say that the process of radioactivity's Julius Elster and Hans Geitel, teachers who collaborated
discovery was over. The process took several months, for almost 40 years, verified the physical properties of the
which were notable for a number of conclusions that were rays and the fact that radiation persisted when the salts

FEBRUARY 1996 PHYSICS TODAY 25

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were kept in darkness for months. And at the University
of Cambridge, C. T. R. Wilson, a student of J. J. Thomson's
who was already building the first cloud chamber, showed
that uranium rays would produce nuclei for the conden-
sation of water. Because these nuclei were swept away
by an electric field, Wilson reasoned that they must be
charged particles, or ions.
In the two years after Poincare had speculated at the
Academy of Sciences meeting attended by Becquerel about
whether all luminous bodies emit penetrating radiations,
there were perhaps no more than a dozen other original
research contributions in addition to the nine papers on
radioactivity written by Becquerel. X rays, which pro-
duced far sharper photographic images in less time, were
overwhelmingly more popular. (Figure 6 contrasts the
quality of images produced by the two types of rays. I
Laboratories were more likely to have glass vacuum tubes,
spark coils and high-voltage sources than various uranium
compounds. Indeed, in 1896 alone, 49 books and 1040
papers were published on x rays.
Beyond the competition with the immensely popular
x rays, other phenomena served to suppress interest in
radioactivity. The end of the century was a period of
excitement about numerous kinds of radiation, both real
and spurious. There were not only the familiar cathode
rays but also dia- and para-cathodic varieties. There were
canal rays, discharge rays from sparks, Finsen rays, Hertz-
ian waves, emissions from freshly cleaned metallic sur-
faces and a host of radiations from other substances.
Among this plethora of rays, those from uranium did not
stand out.
In early 1898, Curie in Paris and Rutherford in
Cambridge began their own investigations of uranium,
which enabled Becquerel to see the significance of his own
discovery. It was a major new phenomenon of nature!
These fresh inquiries were marked by a more systematic
approach—Curie's survey of the periodic table for other
active sources—and more quantitative techniques—elec-
trometers largely replaced electroscopes and photographic
plates. In 1903, five years before he died, Becquerel
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie
Curie for the discovery of radioactivity.
New and exciting results came quickly, and still others
flowed in over the next dozen years: The activity of
thorium, new elements polonium and radium, the break-
down of the radiation into alpha, beta and gamma com-
ponents and the recognition of their particulate or elec-
tromagnetic natures, the explanation of radioactivity as
atomic transmutation, the recognition of isotopy, and the
transformation of radioactivity itself into nuclear physics.
26 FEBRUARY 1996 PHYSICS TODAY
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IMAGE OF A HAND made with
emissions from radioactive substances
(left) is not nearly as sharp as that made
with x rays. Becquerel's discovery of
radioactivity thus attracted far less
attention than the discovery of x rays
made by Rontgen the previous year.
FIGURE 6
Becquerel, it turns out, had opened a new branch of
science.
The legacy of nuclear physics
Since the discovery of radioactivity evolved into the study
of nuclear physics almost a century ago, the applications
that have flowed from the work of Becquerel and others
are primarily nuclear medicine, nuclear reactors and nu-
clear weapons. In the field of medicine, diagnostic proce-
dures, such as tracer techniques, and therapeutic appli-
cations, such as the treatment of cancer by radiation, have
proven to be highly valuable and no doubt will continue
to be worthwhile. But the future of nuclear reactors and
weapons is more problematic. Electric utilities in the US
ceased buying nuclear power plants some two decades ago,
amid fears of meltdown and skyrocketing costs, while
reactors for ship propulsion seem to be viable only in naval
vessels, where cost is less important than convenience.
Similarly, nuclear weapons, which ranked terribly high in
the developed world's consciousness until the recent end
of the Cold War, have an uncertain future. They seem to
be unusable, except for deterrence, and the world commu-
nity increasingly seeks to contain them (as reflected in
the recent renewal of the NonProliferation Treaty). No
doubt, such weapons will remain part of our society in
the future, but their significance in the scheme of things
will likely be less. The centennial of radioactivity's dis-
covery thus celebrates in several ways also the demise of
its own influence.
For further reading:
L. Badash, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 18, 55
(1965).
L. Badash, Am. J. of Phys. 33, 128 119651.
L. Badash, Isis 57, 267 (19661.
L. Badash, Isis 63, 48 11972).
L. Badash, Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay ofa Science
(Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1979).
Henri Becquerel, Recherches sur une propricte nouvelle de la
matiire, memoires de l'Academie des Sciences de l'lnstitut de
France, vol. 46 I Firmin-Didot, Paris, 1903). In his only book on
the subject, Becquerel organized and reviewed his work on
radioactivity.
Helmut Gernsheim, The History of Photography (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, London, 1955).
E. Newton Harvey, A History of Luminescence (American Philo-
sophical Society, Philadelphia, 1957).
Alfred Romer, ed., The Discovery of Radioactivity and Transmuta-
tion (Dover, New York, 1964). Many of the early papers in
radioactivity are translated into English here.
Glenn Seaborg, "Uranium," Encyclopaedia Britannica 22. 888
(1957). •