Article ID: CBB000650656

Becquerel's Blunder (2005)

unapi

Badash, Lawrence (Author)


Social Research
Volume: 72
Pages: 31--62


Publication Date: 2005
Edition Details: Special Issue: Errors: Consequences of Big Mistakes in the Natural and Social Sciences
Language: English

This article deals with the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 and its significant impact on science and the world. The discovery by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen of X-rays in late 1895 was the most globally astonishing scientific event prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Some 50 books and pamphlets and 1,000 papers on X-rays were published in 1896 alone, remarkable testimony to the impact of these penetrating rays. By contrast, Henri Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity just a few months later, wrote seven papers on the subject in 1896, only two the following year, and then left this seemingly exhausted topic. Others added several papers in this period, but amidst the plethora of various radiations being studied at that time, the radiations from uranium did not seem extraordinary. Especially, uranium rays could not produce the sharp images of bones through the flesh of a living hand that made X-rays so intensely fascinating. Not until Gerhard C. Schmidt and Marie Curie in 1898 independently reported that thorium exhibited the same properties as uranium was interest in radioactivity resurrected, drawing Becquerel and many others back to his discovery.

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Description On the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896.


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Article Holton, Gerald (2005) Guest Editor's Introduction. Social Research. unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000650656/

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Authors & Contributors
Jorgensen, Timothy J.
Oszajca, Paulina
Wilder, Kelley E.
Weber, Werner
Steinle, Friedrich
Schüttmann, Werner
Concepts
Radioactivity
X-rays
Physics
Error
Methodology of science; scientific method
Photography
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
20th century, late
Places
France
United States
Italy
New York (U.S.)
California (U.S.)
Paris (France)
Institutions
General Electric
École Polytechnique, Paris
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