Discussion on the structure of the atom.

When the secretary of the Royal Society asked me to open a discussion on the structure of the atom, I very gladly acceded, for I felt that it was a subject which would be of interest to many members of the Society, even if their own investigations are not directly connected with this special field of enquiry. I should first like to point out that a large part of the work in modern physics for the last 20 years has been intimately connected with the problem of the structure of the atom, and several very powerful methods of attack have recently been developed to throw light on its structure.