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2026-10-08 - New York Times archive (via Google site: search)

What was searched

  • Google: site:nytimes.com "Soddy" radium OR transmutation OR "atomic energy" archives (pages 1 and 2 of results).
  • Google: Kelvin 1906 radium controversy energy from ether external source Soddy "The Times" helium (gave the 1906 Kelvin item). Only Google result snippets were read; the TimesMachine pages were not opened (NYT pages may need a subscription).

Found [web, snippets]

  • 1903-11-28 "RADIUM AND HELIUM" (Rutherford and Soddy's work "of exceeding" interest).
  • 1906-08-24 "KELVIN ON RADIUM'S ORIGIN; He Thinks Atoms of ..." - Kelvin's Times letter replying to Strutt (https://www.nytimes.com/1906/08/24/archives/...).
  • 1907-07-28 "RAMSAY SURE OF DISCOVERY" (transmutation of metals by radium emanation; Soddy, Strutt and others on the other side).
  • 1907-08-03 "WHAT IS MATTER? SCIENCE NOW ASKS" - "The chemists, and especially Mr. Soddy ... regard this school as drunk on radium rays".
  • 1908-11-08 "ATOM OF MATTER CAN BE DETECTED; Prof. Rutherford ..." with a telegram from Soddy at Glasgow.
  • 1909-03-07 "RADIO-THOR WILL DO WORK OF RADIUM; For Most Purposes the Cheaper Substance Will Answer, Frederick Soddy Admits".
  • 1909-07-10 "RADIUM THE KEY TO OTHER REALMS; Prof. Soddy Enters ..." - review of The Interpretation of Radium (1909).
  • 1913-09-28 "SCIENCE ON ROAD TO REVOLUTIONIZE ALL ...".
  • 1913-11-30 "URGES THAT RADIUM BE NATIONALIZED; Prof. Soddy Wants ..." and 1913-12-02 editorial "THE SUPPLY OF RADIUM": Soddy said "the supply of radium is in the hands of private exploiters who have forced its price" up.
  • 1914-08-11 "SCIENCE ABOVE WAR" - "A Soddy or a Ramsay who may yet loosen the immeasurable forces locked up in" the atom.
  • 1920-01-27 "LIMITLESS FORCE IN ATOMS; Prof. Soddy Says Science Can ..." - snippet: alchemists' dreams of turning base metal into gold, "There was nothing extravagant in them, he" said.
  • 1932-11-13 review of The Interpretation of the Atom.
  • 1946-06-30 "THE SEARCH AND EVENTS THAT YIELDED THE BOMB" (Rutherford and Soddy at McGill, 1902).
  • 1951-04-11 "BOOM IN ISOTOPES" ("Until 1913, when Frederick Soddy coined it, there was no such word as 'isotope'").
  • 1956-09-23 obituary "FREDERICK SODDY, SCIENTIST, IS DEAD": "Professor Soddy had strong ideas on what should and should not be done with atomic energy. Last year he said that hydrogen bomb tests ..."

How it bears on the claims

  • Claim 2: the Kelvin 1906 item is the contemporary press record of the challenge Soddy answered in Nature (see Internet Archive note).
  • Claims 6-7: 1909, 1914 and 1920 items show how Soddy's "limitless force in atoms" and transmutation message reached the general press; 1913 items show his public campaign on radium supply and price (historical record, priority 4). The 1956 obituary records his late statements on hydrogen bomb tests.
  • Related claimed transmutation (priority 3): the 1907 items record Ramsay's claimed transmutation of copper to lithium by radium emanation, which Soddy opposed (see sites.md leads).
  • NYT 1951 attributes the coining of "isotope" to Soddy alone; other accounts ([memory], high confidence; not checked in this run) credit the Scottish physician and writer Margaret Todd with suggesting the word to him in 1913.