Atticus Rare Books

Fission of Protactinium (Bohr & Wheeler, pp. 1065-1066) AND On Pair Emission in the Proton Bombardment of Fluorine (Oppenheimer & Schwinger, pp. 1066-1067) in Physical Review, November 15, 1939, Vol. 56, Issue 10 [Single Journal Issue in Original Wrappers CONFIRMS BOHR & WHEELER’S THEORY OF NUCLEAR FISSION]

Bohr, Niels & Wheeler, John AND Oppenheimer, Julius Robert & Schwinger, Julian

Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1939. 1st Edition. Single Journal Issue in Original Wrappers, 1st edition. Offered here is Bohr and Wheeler’s November 1939 paper confirming their predictions in the September "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission” paper (which we offer separately). While this work is one of Bohr’s three major 1939 papers on fission, the September paper is the more important of the two.

BOHR & WHEELER'S "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission," published in September of 1939 and which we offer separately, is the first fully worked out theory of nuclear fission and it laid the groundwork for atomic and hydrogen bombs. "The paper is a masterpiece of clear thinking and lucid writing. It reveals, at the center of the mystery of fission, a tiny world where everything can be calculated and everything understood. The tiny world is a nucleus of uranium 236, formed when a neutron is freshly captured by a nucleus of uranium 235. The uranium 236 nucleus sits precisely on the border between classical and quantum physics." By studying this process in detail, they show how the complementary views provided by classical and quantum pictures are both essential to the understanding of nature. Without the combined power of classical and quantum concepts, the intricacies of the fission process could never have been understood. Bohr's notion of complementarity is triumphantly vindicated" (Barrow, Science and Ultimate Reality, xvii).

OPPENHEIMER & SCHWINGER'S "On Pair Emission" explains the observed effect as the existence of vacuum polarization, the virtual creation, for short periods of time, of electron-positron pairs. Item #1298

CONDITION & DETAILS: Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1939. (10.5 x 8 inches); 267 x 203 mm. Original wraps, very tight and solid. Two small and light ex-libris stamps on the front wrapper and the usual slight toning at the edges. Otherwise, it is an exceptional copy bright and very clean throughout.

Price: $350.00