Radioactivity by Marjorie C Malley - review

The mystery of science is overshadowed in this landmark study

There is little forgiveness in science: erroneous assumptions are discarded, without feeling and forgetting. The reasons seem obvious. Science is a tool to understand and manipulate the world, and what tools I use are obsolete? But note how memorialized earlier forms of literature and art. Besides the pleasure they give us, are a way to understand ourselves, a mirror that reflects our culture and our way of thinking. Could the same be said of science gone?

I hope. There are a lot of romance in the history of science so that it can be ignored. Scientists themselves may be busy with other things, but the rest of us can enjoy picking through the gossip who stayed behind. Majorie C. Malley book is rich in them. In a world long before they start neutrinos travel faster than light, we hear of "corpuscles", the discovery of "uranium X", the appearance of a mysterious element called ionium, research the "radium emanation" and all kinds of rays. The book is a portrait of the early years of age radioactive, and documents all the false starts, dead ends and triumphs that come with the birth of a new field .

• Malley made the point that Europeans of the 19th century had been dazzled by recent developments in the theory of electromagnetism, in particular, reinforce the feeling that there was a realm beyond the world materials are just beginning to reveal their secrets. At the same time, there is a growing interest in the supernatural and spiritualism theaters filled with the West. In Germany, Wilhelm Roentgen noticed that a fluorescent substance on the other side of the dark shining your lab when you turn on a device that generates cathode rays. Fluorescence is the result of an invisible beam that can penetrate and travel far objects in space - and he called the X-ray

The Röntgen opened the border drawn by the best scientific minds, including Henri Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie. Becquerel discovered another type of strike given by uranium, which blurs the photographic plates. The Curie deduced that these samples also contained another substance, which produces the most powerful rays: what turned out to be a whole new element polonium. A second element was discovered in a similar manner, the radius, which in turn resulted in a gas, called radon. Nobel rain down, and the discoveries of polonium and radium in 1898, gamma radiation and radon in 1900, the alpha particle in the year 1902 -. Came thick and fast

The number of scientific personnel is well documented, but, curiously, Malley wait up to two thirds of the way through his book talks about the harmful effects of radioactive substances. For the radio enough for their experiments, the Curia has ordered 220 pounds of pitchblende, a uranium ore, and processed for themselves in the court of his dilapidated laboratory. His notebooks are now dangerously radioactive. Pierre tied a radio on his arm for hours at a time to test their effects on human tissue, while others carried the material in their pockets. Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia caused by radiation, and her daughter to leukemia. Outside the scientific community, radio and the radioactivity was operated as miracle cures. Radium salts consumed in tonics freely available. Radon was inhaled by patients with tuberculosis. Radium spas arose and which were used were built around radioactive sources of water. Fortunately for some customers - even if it would have felt cheated if they had known at the time - the water in these places often do not contain the element, whose price had shot

So much to mention here: a laboratory full of light slightly sparkling fairy dust "," who were a source of pleasure but also the death of Curie and her daughter sessions with X-rays, the change in the perception of a tangible world with a wave and "energy". Unfortunately, Malley, a former academic, is very systematic in their approach. Discussion of the cultural significance of the radioactivity is divorced from the scientific narrative, which in turn is separated by the subject in the infinite subdivisions. There is a sense of dislocation, and the book ends with the feeling too much like a course of study to ignite the imagination. This is a missed opportunity: in a scientific world, the stories of this type should be as familiar to the laity and biblical stories before. Malley written, informative, but sterile, does not bring to life.

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