With this in mind, for some twenty years I have set myself as my particular task the experimental investigation of the connexion between change in the structure and change in the spectra of chemical atoms.

A beam of luminous hydrogen canal rays has, owing to its velocity, exactly the same direction as that of the electric field in which it may be made to move.

We have learnt through experience that when an electrical ray strikes the surface of an atom, an electron, and in some circumstances a second and even a third electron, can be detached.

The question of the composition of perceptible objects is one which already occupied the mind of the ancient Greeks.

At the head of these new discoveries and insights comes the establishment of the facts that electricity is composed of discrete particles of equal size, or quanta, and that light is an electromagnetic wave motion.

If the experimental physicist has already done a great deal of work in this field, nevertheless the theoretical physicist has still hardly begun to evaluate the experimental material which may lead him to conclusions about the structure of the atom.

With this in mind, for some twenty years I have set myself as my particular task the experimental investigation of the connexion between change in the structure and change in the spectra of chemical atoms.