First edition. New York: American Telephoen and Telegraph Company, 1949. The first comprehensive report on the transistor; one of the most important inventions of the 20th Century. The invention of the transistor was first announced in three short letters by Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley, and Pearson, in The Physical Review (July... More
Item #2419
Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1896. First edition, in original printed wrappers, of the discovery of radioactivity. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903 was shared between Becquerel, “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity,” and Marie and Pierre Curie, “in recognition of the extraordinary services... More
Item #3578
London: Taylor & Francis, 1924. First edition of this celebrated paper. Its idea of modeling atomic behaviour under incident electromagnetic radiation using ‘virtual oscillators’ led Born and Heisenberg to explore mathematics that strongly inspired the subsequent development of matrix mechanics. The most striking feature of this remarkable paper, “The Quantum... More
Item #3514
First editions. London: Taylor & Francis, 1913. Extremely rare author’s presentation offprints of his great trilogy, which constitutes the birth of modern atomic physics. “Bohr’s three-part paper postulated the existence of stationary states of an atomic system whose behavior could be described using classical mechanics, while the transition of the... More
Item #3293
![On the Quantum Theory of Line-Spectra, I-III [all published]. Niels Henrik David BOHR.](/pictures/thumb/2257.jpg?v=1434448378)
All first editions. Copenhagen: Bianco Luno, 1918-1922. A fine set of this major work: It was in this fundamental paper that Bohr first gave a clear formulation of, and fully utilized, his 'correspondence principle'. Besides his derivation of the Balmer formula (1913), this is by many considered to be Bohr's... More
Item #2257
First edition. Lancaster, PA & New York: American Physical Society, 1935. A very fine copy, in the original wrappers, of Bohr’s response to the famous ‘EPR paradox,’ which he resolved by introducing the notion of ‘quantum entanglement.’ Bohr’s paper also marks the conclusion of the Bohr-Einstein debate on the foundations... More
Item #3515
London: The Royal Society, 1909. First edition, offprint issue, author’s inscribed presentation copy, of Bohr’s first published scientific paper. “His first research project, a precision measurement of the surface tension of water by the observation of a regularly vibrating jet, was completed in 1906, when he was still a student... More
Item #4432
Copenhagen: IIe Congrès International de la Lumière, 1932. First edition of this famous lecture, which marks Bohr’s first detailed attempt to apply concepts arising from quantum mechanics (particularly complementarity) to areas outside physics. “Here, for the first time, Bohr raised a question that was to preoccupy him, off and on... More
Item #3792
First edition, offprint issue. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1923. In this article "Bohr discussed in greater detail than ever before the problem of the complex structure of spectral linesand the anomalous Zeeman effects. He argued there in connection with the case of doublet spectra that 'we must be prepared for... More
Item #2189
First edition. [London: Harrison and Sons], 1910. Presentation offprint, inscribed in Bohr’s hand to the chemist Einar Biilmann, of the ‘Second Royal Society Paper’ – what Bohr “learned by working in this field may have been a help to him when, more than a quarter of a century later, he... More
Item #3505
First editions, author's presentation offprints, inscribed. Copenhagen: Bianco Lunos, 1918-1922. A rare complete set of his major work in the scarce presentation-offprint issue; with ‘Separate Copy’ printed on the front wrappers. Inscribed by Bohr to Austrian physicist Egon von Schweidler (1873-1948) on the front wrapper of the first part. It... More
Item #3545
First edition. [London: Taylor & Francis], 1915. Author’s presentation offprint, inscribed by Bohr to Prof. Biilmann, of this seminal paper in which Bohr introduced the concept of ‘stationary state’. Soon after the completion of Bohr’s great trilogy on atomic constitution had appeared in November 1913, Moseley began to carry out... More
Item #3301
First edition. London: Macmillan, 1928. A fine copy in original wrappers of this fundamental paper introducing Bohr’s statement of his ‘complementarity’ principle, the basis of what became known as the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics. “From the epistemological point of view, the discovery of the new type of logical relationship... More
Item #3024
[Edinburgh: R & R Clark, April 14, 1928. First edition, extremely rare offprint issue, of this fundamental paper introducing Bohr’s statement of his ‘complementarity’ principle, the basis of what became known as the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics. “From the epistemological point of view, the discovery of the new type... More
Item #3779
Lancaster, PA & Corning, NY: American Physical Society, [1923]. First edition of the ‘Compton effect,’ which demonstrated the existence of quanta of electromagnetic radiation, later called photons. “This discovery ‘created a sensation among the physicists of the time.’ There were the inevitable controversies surrounding a discovery of such major proportions... More
Item #3588
First edition. Charkow: Technischer Staatsverlag, 1933. Extremely rare offprint of this seminal paper which, in the hands of Richard Feynman, gave birth to the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics and Feynman integrals. In his Nobel Lecture, Feynman described how he discovered a way to quantize a classical theory given by... More
Item #2920
[London: Harrison & Sons for the Royal Society, 1926]. First edition, inscribed presentation offprint, of Dirac’s paper, which “is justly seen as a major contribution to quantum theory” (Kragh, p. 36). It introduced his quantum mechanical derivation of what is now called Fermi-Dirac statistics, which describes a distribution of particles... More
Item #4390
London: Harrison & Sons for the Royal Society, 1930. First edition in original printed wrappers of Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter – although he did not accept it as such until a year later (see below) – and the advent of the dynamical view of the vacuum which was fundamental to... More
Item #3519
First edition. Braunschweig: Friedr. Wieweg & Sohn. 1913. The paper in which he first formulated his 'Adiabatic Hypothesis' of quantum theory. "Two important heuristic principles have guided quantum physicists during the period 1913-1925, viz. Ehrenfest's Adiabatic Hypothesis and Bohr's Principle of Correnspondance. The Adiabatic Hypothesis, first formulated by Ehrenfest in... More
Item #2133
Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1914. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprint (with ‘Überreicht vom Verfasser’ (Presented by the Author) printed on front wrapper), and the copy of Einstein’s son Hans Albert, of this crucial transitional paper in which Einstein uses the light quantum hypothesis to give new derivations of... More
Item #4036
Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1914. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprint (with ‘Überreicht vom Verfasser’ (Presented by the Author) printed on front wrapper), and the copy of Einstein’s close friend and colleague Paul Ehrenfest, of this crucial transitional paper in which Einstein uses the light quantum hypothesis to give... More
Item #4295
Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1925. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprint (not to be confused with the much more common trade offprint – see below), and the copy of Einstein’s son Hans Albert, of Einstein’s first original paper on unified field theory, and the first to use the term... More
Item #4035
![Thermodynamische Begründung des photochemischen Äquivalentgesetzes. [With:] Nachtrag zu meiner Arbeit: Thermodynamische Begründung des photochemischen Äquivalentgesetzes. Albert EINSTEIN.](/pictures/thumb/4034.jpg?v=1473222403)
Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1912. First edition, extremely rare author’s presentation offprints (with ‘Überreicht vom Verfasser’ (Presented by the Author) printed on front wrappers), and the copies of Einstein’s son Hans Albert, of Einstein’s formulation of the photochemical equivalence law. This is a fundamental principle relating to chemical reactions induced... More
Item #4034
First edition. Berlin: Julius Springer, 1928. A fine copy, from the library of Niels Bohr, of Fermi’s statistical approach to the determination of atomic structure. The association is particularly appropriate since Bohr had inaugurated the quantum-theoretical approach to atomic structure in 1913. Fermi’s approach was developed independently and simultaneously by... More
Item #3540
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985. First edition, first printing, and a fine copy in a bright dust jacket, signed by Feynman and from the library of a second Nobel Prize winner, Edwin P. McMillan. Signed copies of this first printing are rare: Feynman was notorious for refusing... More
Item #4459