Abstract
THE remarkable properties of the rays from radio-active substances which have been examined with such eagerness in recent years throw a curious and interesting light on the older attempts to find a satisfactory theory of radiation. Newton and Huygens, Young and Fres-nel, and other thinkers down to our own times have discussed various hypotheses, rejecting, adopting, amending, and each has given his reasons for his final choice. It is instructive at the present time to examine some of those reasons, and to consider the influences which prompted them to make their great discoveries. More particularly is this the case because some expressed their ideas in the language of a corpuscular theory, and we have now had for some time the opportunity of examining radiations which we know to be corpuscular.
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Radiations Old and New 1 . Nature 90, 529–532 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/090529a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/090529a0