200 



DISCOVERY 



The Transmutation of 

 the Elements 



By A. S. Russell, M.A., D.Sc. 



student of Christ Cluirch, Oxford 



Alchemists are still alive. My quarrel with them is 

 that they are mostly men of one idea, the idea being 

 a wrong one. For some years I have taken an interest 

 in their exploits, and recently, when I analysed the 

 various stories that have come to me, I was struck with 

 their great similarity. It is as though the same 

 alchemist bobbed up from time to time at different 

 places with the same story, but actually this is not 

 so ; it is the same idea that in different places and 

 at different times during the last twenty years has 

 inspired different men. To make gold out of lead is 

 merely one of those conventional methods of raising 

 the wind which include the confidence trick, the 

 Spanish prisoner story, and the poisoning of insured 

 relatives with white oxide of arsenic. I do not say 

 that our conventional alchemist is necessarily in- 

 sincere or even wilfully tells untruths. Occasionally 

 he is quite sincere, or, as it has been described to me, 

 " candour and innocence are reflected from every pore 

 of his body." He is merely under a delusion, and he 

 wishes to share this delusion with his fellows, particu- 

 larly if they be JQurnalists or economists, best of all 

 if they be company promoters or politicians. It is 

 hardly fair to ask him to discuss the matter with a 

 scientist. It disturbs him. He is apt to get rattled. 

 Often his apparatus for doing the job breaks down 

 just before the scientist arrives. It is curious that a 

 scientist should have such a unique effect. 



Two Gold -makers 



It is unfair to alchemists to talk of them in this 

 way without saying, on the other side, that on two 

 occasions they have demonstrated their system before 

 the eyes of a scientist. On the first occasion the 

 alchemist made mercury from lead, and after resting 

 from this truly Herculean feat, made gold from 

 mercury. The lead and the furnace to melt it were 

 provided for him, the mercury, it was discovered, 

 came from a hip-pocket, the gold from a sleeve. On 

 the second occasion, which took place after the death 

 of the first alchemist, a mixture of gold and lead was 

 actually prepared from carefully purified lead under 

 strict conditions to avoid the results of prestidigitation. 

 (The alchemist was clad in a bathing-suit.) But even 

 he insisted on stirring the molten lead with a steel rod, 

 and afterwards the rod was found to be hollow. The 



ingenious man had had it fUled with gold dust and 

 closed with wax, so that the gold passed into the lead 

 without difficulty soon after stirring had begun. 



If one could make gold genuinely out of lead or any- 

 thing else, there would be no occasion to adopt the 

 tactics of the alchemist — in trying to float a company 

 or to sell the patent to a government, etc. — the gold- 

 maker has merely to continue making the gold, and 

 soon he will acquire all the wealth as well as all the 

 scientific fame he can desire. He needs no one to 

 help him. But actually, unless present-day science 

 has gone right oft' the track, no one can make gold in 

 bulk or even in quantities that can be seen or weighed. 

 Yet science does not declare that transmutation is 

 impossible ; quite the contrary. But in showing that 

 transmutation is not only possible, but actually going 

 on in nature, it reveals how absurd, or at the best 

 how distorted, are the usual ideas and claims of 

 alchemy. 



The disintegration or transformation of atoms that 

 is known as transmutation is most conveniently 

 described under two heads : (i) transmutation which 

 occurs spontaneously in nature and which is confined 

 to the very heaviest elements, and is so far uncon- 

 troHable by man ; and (2) artificial and controllable 

 disintegration, due to the experimental skill of Sir 

 Ernest Rutherford, of Cambridge, which is confined 

 at the time of writing to a few of the lightest elements. 



Spontaneous Transmutation 



I pass now to the first part of the work, dealing with 

 genuine atomic disintegration, i.e. to radio-activity 

 First of all, what is meant by disintegration ? Let 

 me say a few words about the atom in reply. An atom 

 is supposed to be a structure about io~^ cm. (about 

 a hundredth of the millionth part of an inch) in diame- 

 ter, having at its centre a tinj' thing called the nucleus. 

 The nucleus consists of both positive and negative 

 electricity (with, however, a great deal more of the 

 first than of the second, so that it is positive ) ; it is 

 only about io~'' cm. in diameter (the hundred- 

 thousandth part of the diameter of the atom), and yet 

 it contains practically the whole of the mass of the 

 atom. Round this nucleus are spaced many single 

 charges of negative electricity called electrons. The 

 heaviest atom that is known, the atom of uranium, 

 has ninety-two electrons ; the lightest, that of hydro- 

 gen, has but one. It is the nucleus, not its surroimding 

 electrons, which is the seat of atomic disintegration. 

 Alter the nucleus, if you can — it is extremely difficult 

 to do so, but not impossible — and you have brought 

 about transmutation. Now, this tiny nucleus has 

 a structure about which something is known. It 

 appears to consist of an assemblage of the nuclei of 



