Abstract
HE past twenty-five years has been a period of unexampled activity in physical science, and has witnessed a series of important discoveries which have widely extended our knowledge of the nature of the atoms and the interaction between matter and radiation. On looking back, we can see that the direction of advance was greatly influenced by three fundamental discoveries made at the end of last century—the discovery of X-rays, of radioactivity and of the electron. The proof of the wave-nature of the X-rays in 1913 led to the development of simple methods for studying the X-ray spectra of the elements, and thus gave us important information on the arrangement of the electrons deep in the atom and their frequency of vibration. The study of the radioactive bodies had disclosed that they were undergoing spontaneous transformation and gave us for the first time an idea of the enormous forces which must exist within the structure of the atom. Sir J. J. Thomson early recognised that the electron must be a fundamental constituent in the structure of all atoms, and had devised methods for estimating the number of electrons present in each atom.
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RUTHERFORD, L. Atomic Physics. Nature 135, 683–685 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135683a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135683a0