100 YEARS AGO

Rutherford and Soddy pointed out that the almost invariable presence of helium in minerals containing uranium indicated that that gas might be one of the ultimate products of the disintegration of the radio-elements. Rutherford, moreover, determined the mass of the projected particle which constitutes the “α-ray” of radium to be approximately twice as great as that of the hydrogen atom, an observation that points in the same direction... We have been engaged for some months in examining the spectrum of the “radio-active emanation” from radium... We have found that after removing hydrogen and oxygen from the gases evolved from 20 mgrs. of radium bromide, the spectrum showed the presence of carbon dioxide. On freezing out the carbon dioxide, and with it, a large proportion of the radium “emanation,” the residue gave unmistakably the D3 line of helium.

ALSO...

It has been stated that the radium rays have been successfully applied in the treatment of a case of cancer by Prof. Gussenbauer, of Vienna. The tumour completely disappeared as a result of the application, radium bromide being made use of as a source of the rays. The early publication of these details in the public Press before there has been time to test the method effectually is much to be deprecated.

From Nature 16 July 1903.

50 YEARS AGO

Personality Development. By J. S. Slotkin. The author, who is a social anthropologist, begins by saying that he has tried to work out a systematic theory of personality development, from the hypotheses and evidence of various relevant sciences. The material is, however, systematic only in so far as it has been distributed under four major headings: inheritance, socialization, culturization and individualization. Within each of the fields the approach is mainly descriptive and anecdotal, and is adorned by a wealth of quotations from ancient and modern writers. It may well be that in the meantime this kind of approach is repaying. Certainly it does not suffer from the aridity of some recent statistical work in the same field. But perhaps we can only be scientific about people if we are content to be dull.

From Nature 18 July 1953.