The Discovery of Radioactivity

FEB 01, 1996

Chance favored Becquerel with cloudy days that hid his phosphorescent uranium salts from the sun. Further experiments led him to conclude that the salts emitted invisible, penetrating rays independent of their luminescence.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881485

Lawrence Badash

One hundred years ago, several remarkable discoveries were crowded into the short space of ten years: x rays in 1895, radioactivity the next year, the electron in 1897, quantum theory in 1900 and special relativity in 1905. Individually, each had enormous significance. Collectively, they heralded what we now know as “modern physics.” Practitioners of the old “classical physics” had no anticipation of the momentous change about to grip their science. Indeed, a few even claimed that all the great discoveries had already been made and that their profession would be reduced merely to measurements of greater and greater accuracy. No doubt some discoveries lay in the next decimal place, as illustrated by the 1894 revelation of the rare gas argon during very accurate measurements of the constituents of air. But a career centered only on making increasingly precise measurements would not have appealed to most physicists.

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References

1. L. Badash, Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 18, 55 (1965).
2. L. Badash, Am. J. of Phys. 33, 128 (1965).
3. L. Badash, Isis 57, 267 (1966).https://doi.org/ISISA4
4. L. Badash, Isis 63, 48 (1972).https://doi.org/ISISA4
5. L. Badash, Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of a Science (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1979).
6. Henri Becquerel, Recherches sur une propricte nouvelle de la matiére, mémoires de l’Academie des Sciences de l’Institut de France, vol. 46 (Firmin‐Didot, Paris. 1903).
In his only book on the subject, Becquerel organized and reviewed his work on radioactivity.
7. Helmut Gernsheim, The History of Photography (Oxford University Press, London, 1955).
8. E. Newton Harvey, A History of Luminescence (American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1957).
9. Alfred Romer, ed., The Discovery of Radioactivity and Transmutation (Dover, New York, 1964). Many of the early papers in radioactivity are translated into English here.
10. GlennSeaborg, “Uranium,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 22, 888 (1957).

More about the Authors

Lawrence Badash. University of California, Santa Barbara.