540 ANNUAI^ REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
indicated to them. Let them take under their protection the young 
men of talent whose gifts should belong to the Nation, and whose 
development would bring to it glory and prosperity. Let them be 
able, in a word, to see in the budget for science a productive expendi- 
ture, a veritable investment with large returns. Then will they 
assure to research workers the means for their study, to learned men 
the possibility of giving their lives to science. 
We now come to the year 1902. Pierre Curie and Mme. Curie 
had just obtained radium, the magnificent completion of an admir- 
able work begun by Mme. Curie in 1897, a little after the discovery 
of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896. It was a logical out- 
come that Eamsay was attracted toward these most interesting re- 
searches. The new domain thus opened to science had as yet been 
explored only by physicists ; it seemed to him immediately that chem- 
istry also could and ought to enter on the scene. He entered boldly 
on the subject; he was to make conquests in it of vast importance. 
Frederick Soddy had come from Montreal, where he had been as- 
sisting Sir Ernest Rutherford in his beautiful work on thorium. The 
curious fact had been discovered that a material substance was con- 
tinually given off from thorium ; it was given the name of emanation. 
Actinium and radium also gave off an emanation. These new sub- 
stances were evidently of a gaseous nature; and, with all the skill 
already acquired in the manipulation of small quantities of a gas, 
Eamsay found himself very well fitted to make a study of them. In 
collaboration with Soddy he tried to obtain the spectrum of the eman- 
ation of radium. As the amount of emanation which comes from 
even a relatively large quantity of radimn is extremely small it was 
necessary to devise a special spectrum tube. It consisted of a thermo- 
metric capillary tube with an electrode made of a platinum wire 
soldered at the end, the second electrode being mercury, which was 
put in in advance with the very small quantity of emanation with the 
aid of a pump. Traces of impurities prevented seeing the spectrum 
of the emanation which it was not expected to see until later; but 
what was the surprise of Eamsay and Soddy when, after the passage 
of sparks through the gas for some time, they saw appear, little by 
little, the lines of helium! 
Helium ! Still helium, a kind of leit motiv in the scientific life of 
Eamsay. And an element produced by another element ! The magni- 
tude of the discovery immediately appeared. For the first time was 
beheld the transmutation of one element to another ! It was entirely 
revolutionary. Is it necessary to add that the scientific public did 
not at first believe and that it would continue to doubt for a long 
time ? The helium had come from anywhere except from the emana- 
tion: From the glass, from the mercury, from the platinum, from the 
walls of the pump. Was not the indestructibility of atoms the dogma 
