William Hampson, classics graduate and barrister, burst into science with his patent for air-liquefaction in 1895. Its success provided the means of isolating the rarer permanent atmospheric gases, and it formed the basis for multi-tonnage gas liquefaction. The British Oxygen Company acquired Hampson's patent interests.

It is for his scientific achievements that we best remember Frederick Soddy—first as the young chemist working with Ernest Rutherford and with William Ramsay in elaborating the disintegration theory of radioactive change, and then as the mature chemist, heading a research programme of his own at the University of Glasgow, a programme which culminated in his formulation of the concept of isotopes in the years before the First World War. Yet there was another side to Soddy's early scientific career: beyond (...) his profound concern with the purely theoretical and experimental aspects of radioactivity research, there was a serious interest in what might be called the practical significance of his science. By practical, I mean those aspects capable of being put to use for the immediate or potential future benefit of man. In this paper I wish to elucidate the nature of this concern during Soddy's career, focusing particularly upon his years at the University of Glasgow, 1904–1914. (shrink)

Frederick Soddy's productive pure research ended with the outbreak of World War I. Before that time Soddy was internationally acknowledged as a great scientist. He had, with Rutherford, produced the atomic disintegration theory and, in association with Ramsay, had proved it experimentally. He had been one of the first men to elucidate the nature of isotopes, and it was he who gave them their name. After the war he was dismissed as a man who had forsaken his science to propound (...) wild theories of monetary reform. (shrink)