The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

The continued study of the properties of the minute particles of radio-active substances--a new name is needed for those most mutable of material grains--must lead to discoveries of great moment for chemistry and physics. That study has already thrown much light on the phenomena of electric conductivity; it has given us the electron, a particle at least a thousand times lighter than an atom of hydrogen; it has shown us that identical electrons are given off by, or are separated from, different kinds of elementary atoms, under definable conditions; it has revealed unlooked-for sources of energy; it has opened, and begun the elucidation of, a new department of physical science; it has suggested a new way of attacking the old problem of the alchemists, the problem of the transmutation of the elements.