RADIOACTIVITY AND TRANSMUTATION 35 



Hitherto in the chemical changes, from which the 

 world derives its chief supplies of energy, such as the 

 combustion of fuel, different elements, such as carbon 

 and oxygen, combine together but do not suffer any 

 intrinsic or fundamental alteration. The compound 

 formed, carbon dioxide, can be decomposed by the 

 chemist to give back again the original carbon and 

 the oxygen, not entirely different elements. In other 

 cases, the decomposition of certain compounds may 

 give rise to the evolution of energy. Examples are 

 to be found in all the modern high explosives, such 

 as gun-cotton, nitroglycerine (dynamite), picric acid 

 (lyddite), and trinitro toluene (T.N.T.). But in 

 no case, except in the radioactive elements, has a 

 veritable transmutation of one element into others 

 been observed. 



We have obtained evidence, in consequence of 

 these new discoveries, that in the atoms of matter 

 exists a store of energy beyond comparison greater 

 than any over which we have obtained control. 

 In the slow changes of the radioactive elements 

 there is known to be an evolution of energy 

 nearly a million times as great as has ever been 

 obtained from a similar weight of matter before. 

 The energy is there, but the knowledge of how to 

 liberate it at will and apply it to useful ends is not 

 not yet.^ 



The problem will be solved when we have learned 

 how to transmute one kind of element into another at 

 will, and not before. It may well take science many 

 years, possibly even centuries, to learn how to do 

 this, but already the quarry is in full view and, by 

 numerous routes, investigators are starting off in hot 

 pursuit. We need only recall the past history of the 

 progress of science to be assured that, whether it 

 takes years or centuries, artificial transmutation and 

 the rendering available of a supply of energy as much 



