No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
During the last half century, the astounding consequences of the discovery of radium were one by one unravelled. They allow us, to-day, to see Marie and Pierre Curie's work in its proper perspective. What the two scientists lit upon in 1898 was not merely a “new substance”. The extraordinary properties of radium shattered all established views as to the structure of matter and considerably modified our conception of the universe. By some of its dramatic consequences, the discovery was also to influence human destinies; over this short period of fifty years, the young science of radioactivity has stretched up to our modern cancer clinics on the one hand, and on the other—by the indirect developments of artificial radioactivity and atomic fission—to Hiroshima … But already other vistas are opening up before us; we may all see, in our lifetime, atomic industry bring a new prosperity to mankind. We have travelled far indeed from the miserable little laboratory where two solitary French scientists first isolated radium; and it is probably true to say that never again will it be possible to achieve a great discovery under such primitive conditions. For modern science, which not only breaks the secrets of nature, but also modifies nature itself, now requires industrial techniques. They, in turn, demand powerful machinery, raw materials, teams of workers—and a great deal of money. The laboratories sheltering the largest cyclotrons or the uranium piles have really become scientific factories.
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.