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Article: Becquerel's blunder.(radioactivity discovery)(Henri Becquerel)
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- March 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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INTRODUCTION
THE DISCOVERY BY WILHELM CONRAD RONTGEN OF X-RAYS IN LATE 1895 was the most globally astonishing scientific event prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. * Some 50 books and pamphlets and 1,000 papers on X-rays were published in 1896 alone, remarkable testimony to the impact of these penetrating rays. (1)
By contrast, Henri Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity just a few months later, wrote seven papers on the subject in 1896, only two the following year, and then left this seemingly exhausted topic. Others added several papers in this period, but amidst the plethora of various radiations being studied at that time, ...