Radioactive substances and their radiations.
Cambridge: University Press, 1913. 8vo. vii, [1], 699, [1] pp., including half-title. FIRST EDITION. With 5 plates and 131 text illustrations. Original green cloth, rubbed; signature of R.T. Beatty on half-title. Item #14383
First edition of Rutherford's last great work detailing the entire up-to-date development of the science of nuclear physics. According to the preface, “in the seven years that have elapsed since the publication of Radio-activity there has been such steady growth of knowledge of the properties of the radiations from active substances, and of the remarkable series of transformations that occur in them ... the present volume is an entirely new work.” Rutherford, in describing the atom as a solar system with a mass at the center and planet-like negative electrons orbiting around it, was possibly the first to use the word “nucleus.”
Rutherford (1871-1937), a physicist at Cambridge, developed the revolutionary theory that radioactivity is a by-product of the transmutation of one form of matter into another. He also detected and named alpha and beta rays emitted from radioactive salts and predicted that disintegration of some radioactive elements would generate helium. In 1908, Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Price: $250.00