TRANSMUTATION OF MATTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 134, 9 June 1930, Page 17

TRANSMUTATION OF MATTER.

DISCUSSED FOR 2000 YEARS. REVIVED BY RADIO-ACTIVITY. The subject of the transmutation of matter Sir Ernest Rutherford recently Safed in a Royal Institution discourse had occupied the minds onun Jor nearly two thousand years. the h or second century A.D ;) AtoJJ Greeks described transmu ation method , but the secrets of changing the appear ance of metals had been known to priests lone before that. The medieval belief n £ possibility of transmutation was £ accord with the philosophy of Ansto S who thought, not that metals were separated from ores but that ores were. Everted into.metals. The^actual ev. deuce of transmutation, to have been .very meagre and doubtful. It was observed, although not under stood that arsenic gave copper a silveiy appearance, and that iron acquired a coating of copper in certain wat«, con taininc copper salts, as we knew no*. Alchemists'contributed much to sconce. When the English war'againsti France threatened - disaster, Ivmg Henry VI. issued, during the years jj« *»JSd, several proclamations enjoining learned men, the clergy for the philosopher's stone in which tne Kfa* beHeved. The belief in transmutatidied gradually as the atomic theory of Dalton gained ground early in the last century, but the conviction the elements consisted of some pri mordial matter survived. Even Faraday spoke of decomposition,.combination and ffatmutation o'f substances as the chief problems of the chemist, and the re EhTof Mendeleieff aM other, on Periodicities in the properties of the e P lements strengthened that convictjom The phvsical and chemical methods then available, however, could clearly not effect any transmutation of one element into another. The discovery of radio-activity and the decay of uranium, through mfruy hang .Into lead reopened the problem ir om g an entirely different pom 'of,v>ew Those changes were limited t a few elements and were not affectejl by laboratory temperatures, radiations, and chen ka7 reactions. Most elements moved stable. If a metal like mercury could be deprived of one and more of its electrons, the changes were temporarv".and the mercury took on its electrons again when left to itself. There was ' however, actual transmutation when we succeeded in changing the amount of matter in the nucleus.