In 1902, an American science writer named Robert Kennedy Duncan wrote a magazine piece titled "Radio-Activity: A New Property of Matter." Its subject is French physicist Henri Becquerel's discovery, in 1896, of the rays that now bear his name. Duncan's tone is so radiant with hope, so luminous with the sheer joy of knowledge, that a few fragments must be quoted:

" 'In the beginning God created,' and in the midst of His creation He set down man with a little spark of the Godhead in him to make him strive to know — and in the striving, to grow, and to progress to some great, worthy, unknown end in this world ..."

Inspired by the recent discoveries of X-rays and phosphorescence, Becquerel experimented with various materials, and "out of all the different substances he tried," writes Duncan, "there was one, a substance containing the metal uranium that had waited aeons for this one precious day. For one day of twenty-four hours this substance lay upon a photographic plate enveloped in black paper, and thus, after ages upon ages of waiting, found utterance. The plate was affected ... [revealing] the presence of penetrating rays ... a new thing in nature! ... So, as Becquerel stood in his laboratory that night, with this thought in his mind and the plate in his hand, he appears sharply silhouetted against the background of the ages ..."