Isotopes
Isótopos
- Date
- 1913 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Glasgow, Scotland
- Credited to
- Frederick Soddy (name suggested by Margaret Todd); confirmed by J. J. Thomson and F. W. Aston
- People
- 👤 Frederick Soddy1877–1956
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
The same element can have atoms of different mass occupying the same place in the periodic table. It explains chemically inseparable radioactive products and fractional atomic weights; Aston separates them by mass spectrometry.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1921 (Soddy) and 1922 (Aston).
What it led to
- Mass spectrometry
- Uranium enrichment
- Isotopic tracers
- Isotope geochemistry
Built on
- Theory of radioactive disintegration1902-1903
- Soddy-Fajans radioactive displacement law
Made possible
- Discovery of deuterium1931
- Oxygen-isotope palaeothermometry (Urey and Emiliani)1947-1955
- isotope separation
- heavy water
- isotopic dating