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2026-10-08 - Lindau Nobel Mediatheque

What was searched

Found [web]

Two audio recordings of Soddy's own lectures (not in the project folder): 1. "Isotopes", 23 June 1952, 66 min (https://mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/recordings/31532). Editorial comment: Soddy, in his 75th year, "gave a long and intricate talk on the history of isotopes"; the talk ran long ("as we can hear him comment after about 60 minutes"); the full two-part text was printed in a special publication of Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau (1981) and the full talk was later given at the Max-Planck-Institut in Mainz. Audience included Otto Hahn, Georg de Hevesy and Irène Joliot-Curie. Subtitles EN/DE. 2. "The Wider Aspects of the Discovery of Atomic Disintegration", 30 June 1954, 57 min (https://mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/recordings/37976). Comment (by Hanna Kurlanda-Witek) quotes Soddy that the new chemistry was "bordering on the bizarre and fanciful", that "it has taken half a century for the clouds to clear away and the picture to become clear", and speaks of the "world within the world" of mesons and neutrinos. He attended every Lindau meeting 1952-1956. - The mediatheque also hosts a "Research Profile" of Soddy by L. Bonolis (Google snippet: "By mid-December 1910, Soddy succeeded in establishing that mesothorium, just discovered by Otto Hahn, was in fact chemically identical to radium").

How it bears on the claims

  • Claims 1 and 5: late first-person accounts (1952, 1954) by Soddy of the disintegration theory and isotopes, with Hevesy and Hahn in the audience. The 1954 title shows he still framed his life's work as "atomic disintegration" with "wider aspects" (social, economic). The recordings were not listened to in this run; a transcript or the 1981 printed text would let a reviewer quote them.