Paris: 1823. 1st Edition. SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST TEXTBOOK ON ELECTRODYNAMICS TO INCORPORATE THE NEWLY MADE DISCOVERIES OF AMPERE & OERSTED (Bakken p. 174; Poggendorff I, p. 548). Demonferrand’s work highlights the “fundamental phenomena and laws of electro-dynamics” and represents a first, important, and..... More

London: Royal Society, 1931. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF DIRAC’S PREDICTION OF A NEW ELEMENTARY PARTICLE – THE POSITRON – ALONG WITH MAGNETIC MONOPOLES. Though not taken terribly seriously at the time, in 1973 “Heisenberg generously called it…perhaps the biggest jump of all big jumps in physics of our century”..... More

London: Macmillan, 1924. 1st Edition. Full volume. FIRST EDITION OF EDDINGTON’S PAPER PROPOSING A CHANGE IN COORDINATE SYSTEMS THAT WILL ELIMINATE THE SCHWARZSCHILD SINGULARITY. The physical significance of this singularity, and whether this singularity could ever occur in nature, was debated for many decades” until the possibility of a black..... More

McGraw-Hill, 1946. 1st Edition. IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, THE FIRST PUBLICATION BY EINSTEIN OF THE FAMILIAR EQUATION, E=mc2, IN THAT SPECIFIC FORM. Eight months after Hiroshima, the editors of Science Illustrated turned to Albert Einstein to explain “the form of the energy that destroyed Hiroshima;” “to explain in his own words..... More

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1925. First French edition of Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) and 1st die Tragheit eines Korpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhangig? (Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content?). Both 1905 treatises are "beyond compare and without precedent, one of the..... More

Berlin: Vieweg und Springer, 1923. 1st Edition. This paper, “On the Quantum Theory of the Radiative Equilibrium” introduces the expression “negative irradiance” ("negative Einstrahlung") for the emission of a quantum by action of irradiance (Calaprice, 121). Following his work on general relativity in 1916, Einstein continued searching for new ways..... More

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1931-1932. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, FULL VOLUME, OF ESTERMANN, FRISCH, & STERN’S 1931 “CONFIRMATION OF THE DE BROGLIE RELATION TO AN ACCURACY OF 1%” (Zare, Otto “Stern and the Double Bank Shot”, Z. Phys. D - Atoms, Molecules and Clusters 10, 377, 1988). One year earlier, Estermann..... More

London: Macmillan & Sons, 1934. 1st Edition. JOURNAL ISSUE, FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT IN ENGLISH BY FERMI OF RADIOACTIVITY INDUCED BY SLOW NEUTRONS. The letter marks the beginning of Fermi's experimental researches in nuclear physics. In 1938 Fermi was awarded "for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by..... More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1955. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL PAPER WRAPS OF A 1955 SYMPOSIUM HELD IN HONOR OF THE CREATOR OF THE WORLD’S FIRST NUCLEAR REACTOR, ENRICO FERMI (1901-1954). “In an extraordinary plenary session at its annual Washington meeting, the American Physical Society honored the memory of..... More

Lancaster, PA: American Physical Society, 1948. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, FULL VOLUME in PRISTINE CONDITION, OF FEYNMAN’S NOBEL PRIZE WINNING PATH-INTEGRAL FORMALISM, A “REFORMATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS ITSELF” (American National Biography). Feynman’s path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics lead physicists out of the morass of endless calculations and provided them with..... More

Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1940. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL PRINTED WRAPS OF THE FIRST OBSERVATION OF SPONTANEOUS FISSION. Spontaneous fission is a type of radioactive decay in which certain unstable nuclei of heavier elements split into two nearly equal fragments (of lighter elements) and in so doing..... More

Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1936. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS. “In 1934, Enrico Fermi provided the first theoretical explanation of beta decay through a mechanism called the “Fermi interaction” or “Fermi coupling,” incorporating Pauli’s “neutron” and coining the name “neutrino” for that particle. Fermi’s theory of the..... More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1955. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of a paper in which Murray Gell-Mann and Abraham Pais make an interesting prediction about the decay of the kaon. A paper by Francis Low is also included (more below). “Murray Gell-Mann and Abraham Pais (1955) used an..... More