A quotation from V.I. Vernadsky, “Today’s Task in the Area of Radium,” 1910:
“Before us is revealed a source of energy, in the face of which fades the power and significance of steam, of electricity and of the explosive power of chemical processes. We, the children of the 19th century, know that, for every step we have taken with the advent of steam and electricity, how deeply they have changed, and continue to change, the entire social structure of human society, and even more, how deeply they are changing the mundane everyday domestic environment of the human individual, encompassing the most slowly changing practices and habits—practices and habits that have existed without change for entire historic periods. And now before us is appearing in the form of radioactivity a source of atomic energy, a million times greater than all other sources of power imagined by the human mind. . ..
