Much of the mystery surrounding the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 was eventually cleared up as the result of Soddy's research. He was born in Eastbourne, England, on September 2, 1877 and attended local schools such as Eastbourne College, University College at Aberystwyth, and, finally, Merton College, Oxford. He received his degree in chemistry from Oxford in 1900. The same year, he traveled to McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he worked with the great Ernest Rutherford.

Rutherford and Soddy collaborated to develop explanations for the nature of radioactivity, discovered by Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1896, and the matter from which it came. They were able to show, for example, that a radioactive element gives off either an alpha particle or a beta particle and changes into a new element. The element itself is often radioactive too, emitting an alpha or beta particle and changing into yet a third element. This process repeats itself...