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Article ID: CBB049300133

Isotopes: Identifying the Breakthrough Publication (2017)

Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Volume: 42
Issue: 2
Pages: 103-111

URI: http://acshist.scs.illinois.edu/bulletin/bull17-vol42-2.php

Publication Date: 2017
Edition Details: The concept of the isotope won the Citation for Chemical Breakthrough award in 2013, which recognizes chemistry publications that were revolutionary.
Language: English

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Selection of the isotope concept for a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough award in 2013 presented both a dilemma of identifying the most appropriate publication to honor and an opportunity for reflection on the nature of this discovery in particular and of scientific discovery more generally. Several findings in the early years of the twentieth century led Frederick Soddy to introduce the term isotope (a word suggested by classics scholar Margaret Todd) for varieties of the same element that have different atomic masses. The public birthday of the term is well established: it was the first published in the December 4, 1913, issue of Nature. The public debut of the concept, however, is much more difficult to date. Five plausible candidates are reviewed here, from the recognition of distinct but chemically inseperable "radioelements," to the elucidation of the pathways of radioactive decay collectively organized under the laws of radioactive displacement, to the adoption of atomic numbers rather than atomic weight as the organizing principle of the periodic table. There happens to be no paper in which a proposal of the isotope concept is either the headline or bottom line result.

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