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52 THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1903

the most progressive physicists. Is the atom indivisible and finite ?—has ever been a question that even the most pronounced atomists have asked themselves from time to time, and if the explanation of the recent discoveries that have been made in connection with radio-activity be correct, the answer must be in the negative. Briefly to summarize from this year’s Romanes Lecture by Sir Oliver Lodge, the most advanced views that physicists are inclined to hold, it may be said that the atom is conceived as consisting of an aggregate of what have been termed corpuscles, and further that each atom may have associated with it a definite charge of electricity, atoms of different kinds having multiples of this charge, such an electrically charged atom being termed an “ion.” Now the smallest unit of electric charge which itself “ possesses the most fundamental and characteristic property of matter, viz. mass or inertia,” is known as an “electron,” and the charge with which the atom is possessed consists of a number of these electrons. Within the atom the “electrons are in a state of vigorous motion among themselves.” But it has been found that the electrons can be detached from the atom at an electrode, and such isolated particles form the cathode rays which when stopped suddenly by a massive obstacle give rise to the so-called

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