Radioactivity: conception to birth. The Health Physics Society 1995 Radiology Centennial Hartman Oration.

Röntgen's description of his discovery of x rays was convincing and comprehensive. The response of the scientific community and public was immediate and intense. In contrast, the discovery of radioactivity was a muddled affair that excited little interest. While it would prove far more revolutionary than that of x rays, the discovery of radioactivity began, in the words of Alfred Romer, as something of a dead horse. There it lay, too big to ignore, but what did you do with it? Even the discoverer, Henri Becquerel, left it to decay and went on to pursue other interests. For various reasons, others chose to investigate: Marie and Pierre Curie in France, William Crookes in England, and Ernest Rutherford in Canada. But it was Frederick Soddy, a young chemist with a fascination for alchemy, who, together with Rutherford, revealed the true nature of radioactivity: transmutation.