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2026-10-08 - Archives Hub (Jisc) / Bodleian Archives / Centre for Scientific Archives catalogue

Investigator (STEP I), project Soddy. Web time for the whole run: 9.6 min (see sites.md).

What was searched

  • Google: "Frederick Soddy" papers Bodleian archive catalogue
  • Archives Hub record GB 161 F. Soddy papers (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb161-f.soddypapers). A script fetch (curl) got a bot-check page; in Chrome the first load also showed "Performing security verification", then the Bodleian search URL (https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search?q[]=Soddy...) redirected to the full Archives Hub record, which loaded.
  • Google: "Soddy" patent inventor "Frederick Soddy" GB OR US patent engine OR "Board of Invention" led to the Centre for Scientific Archives PDF.
  • Downloaded: files/CSAC-Soddy-catalogue-SODDY_FREDERICK_v2.pdf (32 pp.; J. Alton and H. Weiskittel, CSAC catalogue no. 14/8/74), from https://centreforscientificarchives.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SODDY_FREDERICK_v2.pdf. Text extracted to pages/csac-catalogue.txt (OCR is rough in places).

Found

Archives Hub record [web] https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/4418ac0b-ccde-3b5b-b621-8b3878a55d5f : - 20 boxes, 1894-1974, Bodleian Library. Notebooks 1894-1956 "record of his scientific activities including his work with Rutherford and Ramsay, his researches at Glasgow, Aberdeen and Oxford"; lectures and addresses 1895-1954; "papers and patents relating to Soddy's work for the Board of Invention during the First World War"; scientific correspondence 1905-1953. - Separated material: the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford holds lecture slides, "parts of Soddy's machine for solving cubic equations with three real roots, and a model of an unconventional internal combustion engine incorporating an unusual mechanical linkage", designed by Soddy and made by F. J. March in the late 1920s. "Additional notebooks from the Glasgow period are held in Glasgow University Archives."

CSAC catalogue [web, PDF above] (page numbers are the catalogue's typed pages; items as numbered there): - Custody: Soddy left his papers to Major and Mrs Muriel Howorth as literary trustees; Howorth published "Pioneer Research on the Atom ... The Life Story of Frederick Soddy" (New World Publications, 1958) and numbered the documents in the order used in her book. About 300 letters passed between Soddy and Howorth in 1953-54 alone. In 1969 Howorth lent 53 letters to T. J. Trenn, who copied 32; "Attempts to trace the originals have proved unsuccessful and Dr. Trenn's copies are now the only record." - Section VI, Aberdeen war work 1914-18 (items ~127-150): the note says Soddy re-sorted these papers in 1952-56, "in some cases apparently intending to resume work on certain inventions" and that "it is probable that the contents of the envelopes have been disturbed, and some of them removed." Items: work on an "Alkali Boiler" / "Fireless Boiler" (reports to the Admiralty by Soddy and Gerald Stoney, July 1916; notebooks resumed 1941 and 1952); "Secret Patent 5527/16 'Improvements in and relating to Fireless Boilers'"; correspondence on secret patents on fireless boilers (1916), steam turbines (1916) and "concentrators" (1917); Board of Invention and Research correspondence; a letter dissolving the BIR Technical Sub-Committee (1918); Ministry of Munitions ethylene extraction (1918); charcoal for military respirators (Chemical Warfare Dept., 1918); gas purification, alcohol as fuel (1919). Also "Professor Soddy's Emanation Gauge", log-scale charts of the decay of radon "Never published or used", 1956. - Lectures and writings: "The Spontaneous Transmutation of the Elements" (plan, 1916); "Alchemy and Chemistry" (lecture); "Money the Mischief-Maker" (1935); "An Independent Scientist's Views on the Economic and Political Possibilities of Atomic Energy for the Future" (1947); "The Story of Atomic Energy and its Lesson" (lecture to the New Europe Group, 1949); "How Isotopes were discovered" (broadcast talk, 1951); Keith Lectures at Glasgow on "Radioactivity". - Item 184: MS "Real Alchemy and the Release of Atomic Energy" (1946). The 1932 "Interpretation of the Atom" was "extensively revised by Soddy 1940-46 for a projected work to be called 'Real Alchemy'", published 1949 as "The Story of Atomic Energy"; notebook 177 is headed "Interpretation of the Atom and Modern Alchemy Revision 1940"; item 174 notes "mainly on Atomic Piles", 1945. - Notebooks: loose-leaf notebook on experiments on helium, thorium, uranium 1908-09; work on emanation from flasks 1908-10; Feb. 17 1914 notebook on the search for "UR.2", an isotope of UrX2 producing actinium; notes on separating UrX and Y, 1913 (HSM MS Museum 121). - Correspondence item 217: with the British Museum Department of Coins and Medals about "Soddy's 1905 request to examine B.M. coins for chemical reaction (declined by Trustees)". Item 218: letter from K. Fajans 19.x.13. Later: correspondence with W. A. Noyes (1935) "re controversy over priority of discoveries of atomic disintegration and isotopes"; with Radium Belge on Katanga uranium ores (1923-24); on thorium lead sent to Hönigschmid in 1916 via Kamerlingh Onnes. - 1950 spectrograph analysis of "Professor Soddy's lead" (HSM item 160).

How it bears on the claims

  • Claims 1, 3, 4 (disintegration theory, radium from uranium, alpha = helium): the laboratory notebooks with Rutherford and Ramsay (1900-04) and the 1908-10 helium and emanation notebooks are the primary lab record behind the books' numbers. Not online; Bodleian reader access needed.
  • Claim 5 (isotopes, credit): the Fajans letter of Oct 1913 and the 1935 Noyes priority correspondence document how Soddy himself handled priority, beside his printed statement.
  • Claims 6-7 (release of atomic energy; transmutation as the key; civilisation and energy): the projected "Real Alchemy" book (1940-46), the 1946 MS "Real Alchemy and the Release of Atomic Energy" and the 1947/1949 lectures are Soddy's own later development of the Chapter XI themes, written around the time of the atomic bomb.
  • Gold-silver speculation (claim 7 asides): the 1905 request to examine British Museum coins "for chemical reaction" may be connected with the idea that old metals show slow change; the catalogue does not state the purpose beyond those words, so this link is an inference to be checked in the letters.
  • Absence of evidence: the catalogue itself says the war-work envelopes were probably disturbed and some contents removed, and that the Howorth originals of the 1953-54 letters are lost. These are the record gaps a reviewer should weigh; the secret patents (5527/16 and others) were never searched in a patent database in this run beyond one Google Patents number (see the Google Patents note).