The Radium Terrors. Science Fiction and Radioactivity before the Bomb.

At the beginning of the 20th century the collective imagination was fascinated and terrified by the discovery of radium. A scientific imagery sprang up around radioactivity and was disseminated by public lectures and newspaper articles discussing the ambiguous power of this strange substance. It was claimed that radium could be used to treat cholera, typhus and tuberculosis, but at the same time there were warnings that it could be used for military purposes. The media and the scientists themselves employed a rich vocabulary influenced by religion, alchemy and magic. The ambivalent power of radioactive elements exerted a great influence on science fiction novelists. This paper will examine some significant works published in Europe, America and Russia during the first decades of the 20th century and their role in the creation of the complex imagery of radioactivity that seized the public imagination long before the invention of the atomic bomb.

[The history of radioactivity and its applications in hygiene and therapy]. / Storia della radioattività e delle sue applicazioni nell'igiene e nella cura.

Since Antiquity, the observation of matter and its composition has been fascinating for the human mind. It represented the core of philosophical studies since the atomistic theory by Leucippus and Democritus, as well as of the opposed theory of elements by Empedocles, Plato and Aristoteles. Research on the atom, on its spontaneous or artificial disgregation, on the practical application of radioactive substances has strongly influenced daily life and the development of knowledge. Products containing radioactive substances have been used, often without regulation or control, in many scientific fields, as well as in medicine and cosmetics.

[Precarious matters. The radium economy, episteme of risk and the emergence of tracer technique in national socialism]. / Prekäre Stoffe. Radiumökonomie, Risikoepisteme und die Etablierung der Radioindikatortechnik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.

Following the traces of radioactive material is--as scholars have recently shown--a valuable historical approach in order to evaluate the material 'factor' of science in action. Even though the origins of materials like radium and artificial isotopes are quite different, their circulation is interconnected. A material pathway can be drawn from the radium industry to the scientific rise of artificial isotopes as indicator substances in the 1930s, continuing to the building of networks by German scientists working for the war efforts. Also, this pathway reveals the role of radiation protection in establishing that material culture. Finally, the dynamics of material traces and institutional linkages is shown by the tracer work of biophysicists and radiation biologists working at the Genetic Department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin and at the Institut de Chimie Nucléaire at Paris, which at that time was occupied by German troops.