The Curious Case Of Frederick Soddy And The Forgotten Race Of Men
In 1921, Frederick Soddy won the Noble Prize in chemistry for his research into radioactive substances and his studies of isotopes, yet curiously this Oxford scientist mused about a “forgotten race of men”. What were the relations between Soddy, the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky and Atlantis, if any? There have been many speculations on the theme of highly advanced ancient knowledge, leading to an abundant number of works that border, unintentionally, on fiction. Authors such as Charles Hapgood, for example, put forward conjectures as to lost ancient civilizations that were capable of mapping the entire globe. While his work, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, was motivated by a genuine interest in the principles of early mapmaking, Hapgood's speculations far exceeded the available evidence.
Map of "Mercury" as described in "The Worm Ouroboros" by E.R. Eddison (David Bedell/ CC BY-SA 3.0)
These kinds of fantastic visions into the remote past of human civilizations — and the idea of lost technological knowledge — have a long and peculiar history, engaging not only writers on the fringe, but also sober scientists. Radium, despite its distinction of being radioactively luminescent, is not a substance that one readily connects with mysticism; but through a peculiar series of connections between science, speculation, and spiritual beliefs, one can trace a direct line from a scholarly work on the characteristics of radium from the Oxford professor Frederick Soddy’s The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the Atom, all the way to the Theosophical doctrines of Blavatsky and ideas on lost knowledge.
