French science of the period between 1793 and 1830 is now a major focus of study. The large body of work produced since the nineteenth century, particularly in the field of institutional history, has provided the background for important attempts in the last ten or fifteen years to apply tools of sociological analysis to this field of enquiry. Particularly important have been theories of professionalization and institutionalization. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the consequences of the use of such models in relation to this specific historical context. In particular, I shall suggest that such questions as the importance of institutions in the conduct of science, and the extent to which science became a profession or remained a vocation, may be better understood once the world of French science has been situated in a wider political and intellectual context. An article, however, can do no more than suggest new perspectives, and must leave to more extended treatments the work of amplification and correction. Briefly, however, this paper will argue for a view of science at this period as locked in a conflict between the ambiguous demands of the political world on the one hand, and on the other pressures on individuals and groups within the vocation of science to conform to an ideology which viewed science as completely non-political.

Frederick Soddy's productive pure research ended with the outbreak of World War I. Before that time Soddy was internationally acknowledged as a great scientist. He had, with Rutherford, produced the atomic disintegration theory and, in association with Ramsay, had proved it experimentally. He had been one of the first men to elucidate the nature of isotopes, and it was he who gave them their name. After the war he was dismissed as a man who had forsaken his science to propound wild theories of monetary reform.

It is for his scientific achievements that we best remember Frederick Soddy—first as the young chemist working with Ernest Rutherford and with William Ramsay in elaborating the disintegration theory of radioactive change, and then as the mature chemist, heading a research programme of his own at the University of Glasgow, a programme which culminated in his formulation of the concept of isotopes in the years before the First World War. Yet there was another side to Soddy's early scientific career: beyond his profound concern with the purely theoretical and experimental aspects of radioactivity research, there was a serious interest in what might be called the practical significance of his science. By practical, I mean those aspects capable of being put to use for the immediate or potential future benefit of man. In this paper I wish to elucidate the nature of this concern during Soddy's career, focusing particularly upon his years at the University of Glasgow, 1904–1914.

In his presidential address to the chemistry section of the British Association in 1907, Arthur Smithells pointed to work in radioactivity with wonder, calling it the ‘chemistry of phantoms’. Indeed, the transitory nature of the radioelements, coupled with the exceedingly small quantities commonly handled, made many a traditional chemist hesitant to accept these unusual substances as real elements worthy of insertion into the periodic table. Besides, there were too many of them: by 1913 over thirty radioelements were known, but there were no more than twelve boxes in the periodic table in which to house them. Moreover, there was much confusion about radioelements that had different physical properties such as half-life and range of emitted alpha particle, but which could not be separated chemically. Small wonder then that Alexander Russell, the only person who worked with both Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy, recalled the prevalent attitude of chemists as discouraging of interpretative attempts: theirs was, so they claimed, ‘an experimental science. No good ever came from pontificating on the ways of Nature from the comfort of an armchair. The laboratory bench, not the sofa, … was where the truth would be found’.