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Frederick Soddy

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Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation.

Frederick Soddy (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. He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1921, and has a crater named for him on the far side of the Moon.

Quotes

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  • As scientific men we have all, no doubt, felt that our work has been put often to base uses, which must lead to disaster. But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance. On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.
    Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation. For them, such a charge is worse than that of crime.
  • Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it.
    • As quoted in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 14 | (1946), p. 248
  • Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.
    • As quoted in Morning of the Magicians (1963) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Berger, p. 181

Intra-atomic Charge (Dec 4, 1914)

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Nature, No. 2301, Vol. 92, p. 399-400.
  • I regard van der Broek’s view, that the number representing the net positive charge of the nucleus is the number of the place which the element occupies in the periodic table when all the possible places from hydrogen to uranium are arranged in sequence, as practically proved so far as the relative value of the charge for the members of the end of the sequence, from thallium to uranium, is concerned. We are left uncertain as to the absolute value of the charge, because of the doubt regarding the exact number of rare-earth elements that exist. If we assume that all of these are known, the value for the positive charge of the nucleus of the uranium atom is about 90. Whereas if we make the more doubtful assumption that the periodic table runs regularly, as regards numbers of places, through the rare-earth group, and that between barium and radium, for example, two complete long periods exist, the number is 96. In either case it is appreciably less than 120, the number were the charge equal to one-half the atomic weight, as it would be if the nucleus were made out of a particles only. Six nuclear electrons are known to exist in the uranium atom, which expels in its changes six β rays. Were the nucleus made up of α particles there must be thirty or twenty-four respectively nuclear electrons, compared with ninety-six or 102 respectively in the ring. If, as has been suggested, hydrogen is a second component of atomic structure, there must be more than this. But there can be no doubt that there must be some, and that the central charge of the atom on Rutherford’s theory cannot be a pure positive charge, but must contain electrons, as van der Broek concludes.
  • So far as I personally am concerned, this has resulted in a great clarification of my ideas, and it may be helpful to others, though no doubt there is little originality in it. The same algebraic sum of the positive and negative charges in the nucleus, when the arithmetical sum is different, gives what I call "isotopes" or "isotopic elements," because they occupy the same place in the periodic table. They are chemically identical, and save only as regards the relatively few physical properties which depend upon atomic mass directly, physically identical also. Unit changes of this nuclear charge, so reckoned algebraically, give the successive places in the periodic table. For any one "place," or any one nuclear charge, more than one number of electrons in the outer-ring system may exist, and in such a case the element exhibits variable valency. But such changes of number, or of valency, concern only the ring and its external environment. There is no in- and out-going of electrons between ring and nucleus.

Matter, Energy, Consciousness and Spirit (Apr 25. 1919)

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Lecture to the Aberdeen University Christian Union, Marischal College and in Science and life; Aberdeen addresses (1920) pp. 149-174.
  • Science has wrecked beyond repair certain dogmas and beliefs... current prior to... the doctrine of evolution... That doctrine has... reversed the traditional outlook of men and turned their highest interest from the contemplation of the past to the problems of the future. But physical science... contemporaneously... has contributed in its doctrine of energy an advance of... possibly... greater fundamental importance... It, therefore, is almost a duty of the scientific man... to attempt to rebuild.., destroy, and to state... his view of the matters in which hitherto the priest and the philosopher have, with insufficient knowledge of external nature, been left to themselves.
  • Do not draw the hasty conclusion that, because the clarity and unanimity reached in the study of inanimate nature have not been approached in the study of life, they have... no application... to the higher aspects of life. ...[A]s regards what it is impossible to believe.., they effect a not inconsiderable simplification, and... pave the way... for a more definite and truer... philosophy to replace the old.
  • Life... is lived in an intimate relation with the external physical universe, and the breaking of that connection is death. ...[M]en ...have contended that life transcends the breaking of the bond between it and the external world and persists ...
  • I make no pretence... whether the personality, conscience and soul... is... capable of being regarded as... development of the simple consciousness, or awareness, of its existence... possessed by the lowly organism. I accept the... complete break of continuity between the animate and inanimate worlds, as being all that is really demanded... If I am told that unless I make another such break between man and... animals, I weaken the argument I have suggested accounting for the origin of the belief in... immortality... by including therein all living creatures, it is only necessary to say that the general doctrine of evolution of man from the lower animals seems to point unmistakably in this direction.
  • It is the priests, not religion, [that] it is difficult for scientific men to live with... [S]cience cannot coexist with priest-craft.
  • The scientific man seeks truth as a continually developing revelation, and he changes his outlook on the world... as it unfolds itself before his eyes. The priest teaches that in some remote period... God... revealed Truth once and for all time, and his profession is to guard it against all comers.
  • The world... has changed.., not on account of anything... in the Mosaic or Christian revelations, but on account of the new revelations of science. ...[T]hese have come... by... the reverse of supernatural, by laborious experiment and measurement, by slow accumulation of knowledge and honest and unbiassed weighing of the evidence... [T]hey constitute an essential part of the whole truth, be our religious convictions what they may.
  • What a scientific man conceives to be the truth is... distinct. He is not concerned.., not... greatly interested, in ultimate, absolute and unattainable truth. He frames a hypothesis and tests it in every possible way. So long as... fact is in accord with the hypothesis, and no other hypothesis is in accord.., it is all he seeks to know.
  • If, in the external universe, every event and phenomenon occurs in the precise and often predictable way it would occur if the hypothesis were true, that hypothesis is regarded as the truth, until something occurs which proves it to be in error.
  • There is sometimes loose talk—even among scientific men attempting to generalise concerning other subjects...—that the scientific hypotheses of one age become the laughing stock of the next, but such talkers are often the laughing stock of their own age to those best qualified... [T]here is a steady.., increasingly rapid advance being made into the foundations of knowledge.., impressive... in the continuous evidence... that these foundations have been well and truly laid.
  • No one desires to suppose that... [the methods of science] are the only methods by which Truth is to be sought or found. But when it comes to... imparting knowledge.., to educating the growing citizen to a knowledge of himself and his environment.., differences... [are] great.
  • A... mystic or a monk... who has withdrawn himself from the world and practised starvation, celibacy and general mortification of the body, aspires to reach a spiritual plane from which the world, either... [the] mechanical or... vital aspect, can be left behind and forgotten as a distraction and a curse. ...My criticism ...is concerned with the value to humanity of the results... [W]hatever pinnacle of pure contemplative philosophy... ultimately... reached, little... communicable or of general value to the life or thought of the world seems... [to] result.
  • His scientific analogue is... equally selfish. He... must utterly immerse himself in his own plane of thought, and... investigate... without... consideration... to the existence of any other plane, or to whether his work be... good or evil.., valuable or useless... But such a man, unconsciously... but... infallibly, has taken the one... real method of discovery.., and his work... has been such as to change the mode of living and mental outlook of his kind.
  • But the interest of the average man... must... rest in a just appreciation of the relations of these... worlds, the spiritual and the mechanical, to his own life. ...[O]ut of ... direct connection... they... meet on common ground — in him. ...He has to make his peace with both, as he is the sufferer if his soul gets caught in the gear.
    Neither... spiritual nor mechanical worlds contain him. ...[N]either spirit nor machine, he is an animal, born as animals are born, his... life largely occupied with... sex.., parents, mate.., offspring and the domestic hearth, in later phases with the social, communal and national life.
    Thus we have three distinct worlds, linked each to each, as... of a chain, the middle link only being in direct relationship to the whole.
  • The cold, soulless mechanism of the cosmos invades the living organism, and the principles of energy and matter... in the inanimate world govern man...
  • All that we can learn by science of the... processes... of the living body has been learned in those deep foundations of knowledge appertaining to the simplest state... wherein phenomena and events are unobscured by... life.
  • Mechanics, the science of moving masses of matter, has been extended to... masses... not individually capable of being apprehended..: molecules and atoms.., the mechanics of which constitute chemistry and physics.
  • [C]larification of thought... from the occupation and interpretation of the mechanical world, whether of cosmical systems or of the body of a man, is unique. For from this world mystery in any real sense has been banished. ...Our knowledge of matter and energy ...is far from complete. But in this field we can move with an assurance, and a power of predicting... true of no other realm of study.
  • We... have acquired the sense of direction, though whole territories may await exploration. Though the road... forever recedes, we know the direction... is definitely away from, and not towards the mysteries of life and spirit.
  • The path hewn by knowledge through ignorance points two ways in the direction of the absolute unattainable truth. Man has always tended to confound these two classes of the ultimately unknowable.
  • Magnetism is in a different world from the "animal magnetism" of Mesmer, and the wireless telegraphy that transmits messages through space affords no justification for believing, or otherwise, in telepathy.
  • [T]he further one advances towards the ultimate insoluble problems of physics, the more completely one leaves... the phenomenon of life and... its mysteries. The advance... has been from life and not towards it, and the clouded horizons.., whatever they... contain of wonder and revelation, are likely to afford little... to the... mystery of life.
  • The power by which we live and move and have our being is... that which drives on the stars... Science now takes it... whether in fuel, waterfall or sunshine—...all one—and uses it to do... labour of men.
  • Science can... transfer energy... into living bodies, so that... two may live where before one would have struggled miserably for an existence.
    A simple people, who confused power with deity, like the ancient Greeks or primitive Vikings, would have seen, in this control... the act of a god    , and from their... view... the most god-like achievement man has ever accomplished.
  • [W]e do not think... that there is a "vital chemistry" different from ordinary chemistry. Some... peculiarly vital chemical processes have... been found... precisely similar to those that... in mineral and inorganic chemistry. Thus fermentation, once thought to depend upon living organisms... [are] processes... due to unorganised "enzymes," secreted by the organism, and these enzymes are analogous to the "catalysts" of inorganic chemistry. ...[S]uch catalysts—finely divided platinum... is one of the commonest...— are "poisoned" by the same poisons — arsenic, prussic acid...[etc]—as are most deadly to life. ...The poison ...destroying ...activities of these catalysts... stops the processes.
  • [A]ll... principles that govern chemical phenomena in inanimate matter are observed in the processes peculiar to life.
  • [L]imited, but... significant, control over the processes of inanimate nature... to make them proceed to ends different from... natur[e]... especially, in directions... useful, or... otherwise only attainable by... living organism[s], enables us to construct... a model of the living organism. It is a machine, or mechanical microcosm, under continuous and varying control, by... an internally resident directing intelligence or personality.
  • For ages Niagara roared over its gorge in accordance with the laws of nature, uncontrolled. ...Now tunnels have been drilled in the rock, through which a part of the water falls, no longer to run riot in commotion at the bottom, but smoothly... deprived of its energy in a turbine, to... a dynamo... the transformed energy flows out as electric power capable of lightening the labours of men.
    Niagara... is a mechanism as before, but... linked to... intelligence... guiding and varying its action... It is... one step nearer to being a living organism than before.., a rough and partial model of... the living organism...
  • For good or evil, man has geared his own mechanism with the unbounded machinery of inanimate Nature, and... made possible... elimination of the ugliest features of his existence...
  • Man is... able to project out of himself the personality... in control of his... body, into the mechanism of Nature, so... without violating any law or principle, a process that goes naturally in a useless direction may be made to go in a direction... useful.
  • In the control of his own mechanism, similarly, it is the energy of the external inanimate universe which is guided, not coerced, and still less created.
  • [G]uidance withdrawn.., processes of life resume their uncontrolled natural direction.
  • The mystery is in... the combination of the intelligent guidance with... a perfectly understandable machine. Separately the two functions are... comprehensible. Their combination in a single self-contained organism is the... mystery of life.
  • The self-contained organism is not comprehensible, but the combination of an inanimate mechanism and an external will is more intelligible.
  • [T]here is in man a conscience as well as a consciousness, an ineradicable aspiration towards virtue, which is certainly no less difficult to understand.
  • The combination of the machine and soul is as much a riddle as the combination of machine and mind. Theology has striven to separate the two, has abstracted the soul as... independent.., and regarded it as a projection from and part of a general soul of humanity, existing distinct from and outside of individual men. For the mechanism of Niagara we have the bodily mechanism, and for the personality in control, instead of the humble representative of applied science, the humble individual soul, acting upon orders received from and owing allegiance to an external deity of which it forms a part.
  • H. G. Wells... defined the main difference between an ordinary, modern, intelligent, well-educated, benevolent and morally right-minded atheist or agnostic and the genuine religious enthusiast, as being in the... [atheist or agnostic]'s view of his [own]... high-minded and unimpeachable personality as a separate isolated existence, independent of all others, and the... [religious enthusiast]'s view that what is benevolent, high-minded and noble in his personality is not a natural consequence of the life-process, but part of a personal God, who responds to and lives in... closest relationship with... individual souls...
  • The engineers in the power-house of Niagara are... not isolated existences actuating their machinery out of their own self-sufficiency. They take their instructions from a superior, and the science and practice... in those orders are an accumulation of... that... best in the labours of many men, alive and dead. No single mind could create that knowledge, even if one could... fully to comprehend it.
  • If you talk to these men at their work, you would find... they were... self-contained, knowing little of and caring less for the mere theoretical amateurs who, with... sealing-wax.., wire and.., crude home-made machines, created their livelihood.
  • [M]uch the same... the religious philosopher holds that the benevolent atheist attributes to himself and his... innate self-righteousness a... great deal... He prefers to believe himself the humble subordinate of a superior being that combines, in one personality, the best of all beings that ever lived.
  • There is common ground in the position, that even though a single mind might be able to comprehend all that has gone to the evolution and survival of the essentially humane type of man, no single personality could, if isolated, arrive at it by himself.
  • There is a continuity that endures in the creative achievements of humanity, whether, as the theist believes, in... a personal Deity, or whether as a collective memory, engraved in type or ancient saga... from which... we can hardly escape.
  • There seems very little between these views worth argument, and among educated modern peoples, were it not for the priests, religious differences would scarcely trouble the world.
  • There is..., a danger, since knowledge... is... patchy, and first-class minds are rarely content with the known, but... push off into the unknown, and so become specialists, that the mystery of life becomes automatically thrust out from those regions each has... explored... into those known only at second-hand and by hearsay or from books.
  • Thus, as a physicist or chemist, I hold... there is no mystery... in the inanimate universe, and I put the Rubicon between mechanism and life. A biologist... might totally disagree. But, apart from extreme opinions... there is a growing tendency to distinguish between the mechanism of life and its conscious regulation. ...[A] completeness of knowledge, equal to that in the processes of inanimate nature... and even the artificial generation of life of a simple kind, would not necessarily add anything to the solution of the real mystery.
  • Mechanism there is... and subconscious control for most complicated routine processes, but the mind can hardly be equal to the task of explaining itself to itself.
  • The mechanical and even the animal or vital aspects have been thrust into the background by a developed personality, that consistently acts and tries to act—and therefore... is—a distinct being, resident in the body as a man may live in a house, and, if real, then by the canons of human thought, immortal.
  • Science... has a long road to travel from the stars to the kingdom of heaven. But there seems to be but the one chasm that cannot be crossed, and which, though the gulf ever narrows, still remains unbridged.
  • The will to perform, and, in the special sense that concerns human beings, the goodwill to perform good, is in its nature and origin alone an attribute of life.
  • The power to perform is derived in toto from the inanimate world, however many elaborate metamorphoses it may undergo, and through however many organisms, vegetable and animal, it may pass before it reaches man.
  • The world that is dead vitally and spiritually is not dead physically.
  • The moon... is commonly supposed... a dead world, though since the same sun shines upon it as upon us it cannot be really dead.
  • It is in the present state of physics impossible to conceive of a physically dead world, that is to say, a world without any available source of energy.
  • The discovery of radioactivity has revealed an immense store of energy in the atoms... compared with which all... hitherto... known sinks into insignificance.
  • Instead..., of the world gradually cooling by... it must be getting steadily hotter in its interior owing to the energy evolved by the radioactive elements.., unless there are unknown factors... to compensate...
  • A world without energy... implies a world without matter and, therefore, no world at all.
  • The use, rather than... abuse, of this control of the unlimited resources of Nature brings within the range of practicability the abolition of poverty, destitution and economic slavery of the many...
  • Weighty... influences... prevent... approach to the realisation of Utopia, but—and this should be written on every Church throughout the length and breadth of the land—they are not now physical but moral.
  • The Churches, which should have been the first to welcome the possibility... have... to be won over to the side of the humane man. They have hitherto... proved... the most bigoted and powerful opponents of the science.., alone... able to bring within... practical politics for the masses the Christian principles...
  • A religion that on the most important questions of everyday life has nothing to say.., is a greater danger to the vitality of a nation than... scepticism and unbelief.
  • The idea that physical power is one of the attributes of deity, and the conception of an all-powerful being directing the universe and the physical affairs of men, has left behind it a legacy of nothing but calamity. According to the scientific definition of truth.., there is no such being.
  • We hear from well-meaning, but... unpractical, people that the evils the world suffers... are due to its neglect of God, but... the worst of them are... traceable to the enthronement of God in the wrong place.
  • Science has banished the conception of deity for ever from the working of the inanimate world, which behaves in all respects as, and therefore is a simple machine... The task of controlling it is man's, not God's.
  • If through ignorance and incompetence... [man] fails, no personality, vindictive or benevolent, will interfere. The machine will go on in the same way as..., according to geology, it has been.., in a regular uniform manner for aeons before man arrived...
  • I do not expect to escape or shirk the question, "Who... created... this wonderful and intricate machinery?" Science answers that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. The universe is eternal.
  • Just as the man of science is unable to push his mechanical conceptions to explain life and the Deity, so the theist must not push his conception of the Deity and life into the inanimate universe. The Rubicon that cannot be crossed in the one direction obviously must not be crossed in the other.
  • [A]ncient creeds are working an infinitude of harm in the world, and nowhere more than to the cause of religion.

The Origins of the Conception of Isotopes (Dec 12, 1922)

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Nobel Prize Lecture for Nobel Prize in Chemistry @NobelPrize.org
  • The work of my students and myself, for which you have so signally honoured me... is... a small part of much pioneering work... over... nearly twenty years, into the chemistry of radio-elements and the existence and nature of isotopes.
  • I [will] try to disentangle the real origins of the conception of isotopes.., so far... as I have been connected...
  • What is so very simple and clear to us today at first had a very... puzzling character...
  • [D]isintegrations proceed successively a large number of times... [T]here results a series of more or less unstable new elements, between the original parent element and the... unknown final product.
  • The... study of the chemical character of these successive unstable elements... introduced an idea [that the chemical elements are not... homogeneous.., merely chemically homogeneous]... subversive of the fundamental doctrines of chemistry.
  • In some cases... they are mixtures of different constituents... only identical in their chemical character. ...Colloquially, their atoms have identical outsides but different insides.
  • Chemical analysis classifies according to... systems of electrons which surround a... nucleus, whereas radioactive changes.., [i.e.] veritable transmutations, concern the... constitution of this... nucleus. ...[T]he same exterior may conceal very different interiors in... atomic structure.
  • These elements... identical in... chemical character.., not separable by... chemical analysis are now called isotopes.
  • The power of spontaneously emitting rays... was discovered in 1896 by... Becquerel for the compounds of... uranium.
  • [P]hysicists sorted the rays... into... α−, β− and γ-rays... β-rays were shown to be... expulsion of... electrons... at a far higher speed than any... in the vacuum tube as cathode-rays. The γ-rays were... X-rays... of... greater penetrating power. In due course... X-rays were shown to be waves of light of extraordinary short wavelength and high frequency, whilst... γ-rays are... of even shorter wavelength and higher frequency. The α-rays were first proved to be... radiant atoms of... positive charge and... identified, after many years of... work by... Rutherford, with helium atoms carrying two atomic charges of positive electricity.
  • [T]he ionization produced in gases by all these new types of radiation was quickly elucidated, and... highly sensitive and accurate methods of measurement... evolved, which... contributed to the rapid development of the subject.
  • Of the... similar new radio-elements... radium is still the only one [of] the compounds... prepared in a pure state, and for which the spectrum and atomic weight have been determined. As regards its... chemical character radium is... normal and its properties could have been predicted accurately for... its place in the Periodic Table. It is the last member of the... alkaline earths and stands in relation to thorium as thorium does to uranium in the periodic system. But... it possesses a radioactive character truly astounding. The energy it evolves... 133 calories per gram per hour. ...[T]he uniqueness of radium is due mainly to... its average life, 2440 years.., sufficiently long to... accumulate in... minerals.., yet short enough for the rate at which the energy... is liberated to be... surprising.
  • In the... various disintegration series of uranium, thorium and actinium, every degree of atomic instability is encountered. The average life varies from... [~]1010 years, for... primary... uranium and thorium, down to... a minute.., the limit beyond which the chemical character cannot be investigated. But by physical methods... down to... 1/350 second have been... in evidence, and two, of the order... 10-6 and 10-11 second, are indirectly inferred.
  • The chemical and spectroscopic character is that of the atom during its normal.., uneventful life, whilst its radioactive character is... produced by its sudden death. But for this... it might have been supposed that the chemical character of such... substances would also be extraordinary.
  • In investigating the radioactivity of thorium compounds, we found that a constituent responsible for the greater part of its radio-activity could be separated by the use of specific reagents.

The Kiss Precise (Jun 20, 1936)

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F. Soddy, Nature Volume 137, No. 3477, p. 1021.
  • For pairs of lips to kiss maybe
    Involves no trigonometry.
    'Tis not so when four circles kiss
    Each one the other three.
    To bring this off the four must be
    As three in one or one in three.
    If one in three, beyond a doubt
    Each gets three kisses from without.
    If three in one, then is that one
    Thrice kissed internally.

    Four circles to the kissing come.
    The smaller are the benter.
    The bend is just the inverse of
    The distance from the centre.
    Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
    There's now no need for rule of thumb.
    Since zero bend's a dead straight line
    The sum of the squares of all four bends
    Is half the square of their sum.

    To spy out spherical affairs
    An oscular surveyor
    Might find the task laborious,
    The sphere is much the gayer,
    And now besides the pair of pairs
    A fifth sphere in the kissing shares.
    Yet, signs and zero as before,
    For each to kiss the other four
    The square of the sum of all five bends
    Is thrice the sum of their squares.

Quotes about Soddy

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  • Soddy was a shining example of a man of science who didn't limit himself to a single field of knowledge, but, driven by profound ethical reasons, he faced the most important issues in an interdisciplinary, or rather transdisciplinary, way, to account for the complexity of reality...
    • Vincenzo Cioci, "Frederick Soddy, un chimico alle frontiere della conoscenza, fra Fisica, Economia, Matematica ed Ecologia" (2009) Memorie di Scienze Fisiche e Naturali, vol. 127. pp. 319-330 as quoted by Aleksander Sztejnberg, "Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) - The Most Outstanding British Chemist of the First Half of the XX century (To the 145th Anniversary of His Birth)" Revista CENIC Ciencias Químicas (Jan 28, 2022) vol. 53, Esp.1, pp. 18-37. Source @redalyc.org.

Frederick Soddy—Pioneer in Radioactivity (Jun 2011)

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by Marc A. Shampo, Robert A. Kyle, David P. Steensma, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 86(6):e39. doi: 10.4065/mcp.2011.0300. Source @PubMed Central
  • Frederick Soddy.... won the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry... In 1913, he was the first to announce the concept that atoms can be identical chemically and yet have different atomic weights. These... are... isotopes, a word coined by Soddy, meaning same or equal place...
  • At the University College, Soddy identified helium as a product of the decay of radium.
  • Soddy['s]... best known books are Matter and Energy (1912) and The Story of Atomic Energy (1949).
  • After... Soddy withdrew from... research in chemistry and radioactivity... [he] devoted... time to economic, social, and political theory and wrote several books on these subjects.
  • He became... controversial... and an outspoken critic on social issues, blaming scientists for... disregard of the social consequences of their work, including his own work on radioactivity.

See also

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