20th Century

Born: Eastbourne (Great Britain), 1877
Died: Brighton (Great Britain), 1956 

Soddy studied chemistry in Oxford and graduated in 1898. He worked under Rutherford. Soddy studied the different consecutive radioactive breakdowns beginning with uranium and thorium. In the process of disintegration some fourty to fifty different elements were detected. Soddy suggested that different elements were capable of occupying the same place in the periodic table. In 1913 he called these elements isotopes. Furthermore he could explain all radioactive intermediates and that lead was the final stable element. For these results Soddy was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1921. He was professor of chemistry in Oxford from 1919-1936.