Frederick Soddy FRS 2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956 was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to a transmutation of elements, now required to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes ofradioactive elements. He was a polymath who mastered chemistry, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, finance & economics.
In Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt, Soddy cited the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as evidence for the belief, which was relatively widespread at the time, of a "financial conspiracy to enslave the world". The Protocols was widely disseminated by Henry Ford in the United States. He claimed that "A corrupt monetary system strikes at the very life of the nation." Later in life he published a pamphlet Abolish Private Money, or Drown in Debt 1939.
The influence of his writing can be gauged, for example, in this quote from Ezra Pound:
"Professor Frederick Soddy states that the Gold standards monetary system has wrecked a scientific age! ... The world's bankers ... work non been content to make their share of advanced wealth production – great as it has been – but they have refused to allow the masses of mankind to receive theirs."
Though some activists have insubstantially accused Soddy of anti-Semitism, near of his biographers dispute this narrative and argue that among Soddy's friends and students were some Jews who held positive views of him. Among these friends put Kazimierz Fajans, a Polish-Jewish physicist who worked with both Ernest Rutherford and Soddy.