2017/08/01 by Kate Britton · 43 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Art #Art history #Conversation #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies #History #Linguistics #Literature #Paleopathology and ancient diseases #Philosophy #Topos theory
paper · doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.98
published in Antiquity 91(358), 853-864 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2017/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21
Given their ubiquity in dietary reconstruction, it is fitting that the story of isotopes began with a conversation over dinner. Although coined in scientific literature by Frederick Soddy (1913), the word ‘isotope’ was first conceived by Margaret Todd, a medical doctor (also known as the novelist ‘Graham Travers’, and an all-round gender-stereotype-smasher of their age). In 1912, Soddy and Todd were attending a supper in Glasgow. When talk turned to work, Soddy described the then nameless concept of elements of different masses that occupy the same place in the periodic table. Todd suggested the term ‘isotope’, from the Greek isos (‘same’) + topos (‘place’), and the name stuck (Nicol 1957; Nagel 1982).