|
1898 Marie and Pierre Curie, who coined the term "radioactivity", proved that the decay process is a property of atoms (as opposed to molecular composition), discovered radium, the activity of thorium, and identified a few of the intermediate products of the uranium and thorium decay series. 1902 Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy demonstrated the exponential nature of the change with time in the activity of a radioactive sample. 1905 In a lecture at Harvard, Ernest Rutherford suggested that uranium/helium or uranium/lead ratios could be used to compute the age of rocks. 1900-1930 Every new idea spawns more ideas - not always good! |
|
Information, and a photograph of Becquerel, can be found at.... |
1896
Henri Becquerel (right) discovered that uranium bearing
compounds emit invisible rays with enough energy to ionize air
and to affect photographic plates.