58 The Outline of Science 



atoms of matter on the earth. It is fortunate for us that our 

 atmosphere ahsorbs most of this ultra-violet or invisible light of 

 the sun a kind of light which will be explained presently. It 

 has been suggested that, if we received the full flood of it from the 

 sun, our metals would disintegrate under its influence and this 

 "steel civilisation" of ours would be impossible! 



But we are here anticipating, we are going beyond radium 

 to the wonderful discoveries which were made by the chemists 

 and physicists of the world who concentrated upon it. The work 

 of Professor and Mme. Curie was merely the final clue to guide 

 the great search. How it was followed up, how we penetrated 

 into the very heart of the minute atom and discovered new and 

 portentous mines of energy, and how we were able to understand, 

 not only matter, but electricity and light, will be told in the next 

 chapter. 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE ELECTRON AND HOW 

 IT EFFECTED A REVOLUTION IN IDEAS 



What the discovery of radium implied was only gradually 

 realised. Radium captivated the imagination of the world; it 

 was a boon to medicine, but to the man of science it was at first a 

 most puzzling and most attractive phenomenon. It was felt that 

 some great secret of nature was dimly unveiled in its wonderful 

 manifestations, and there now concentrated upon it as gifted a 

 body of men conspicuous amongst them Sir J. J. Thomson, 

 Sir Ernest Rutherford, Sir W. Ramsay, and Professor Soddy 

 as any age could boast, with an apparatus of research as far 

 beyond that of any other age as the Aquitania is beyond a Roman 

 galley. Within five years the secret was fairly mastered. Not 

 only were all kinds of matter reduced to a common basis, but the 

 forces of the universe were brought into a unity and understood 

 as they had never been understood before. 



