Lancaster, PA., and New York: American Physical Society, 1948; 1949; 1951. First edition, journal issues, documenting the invention of the transistor, “which has been called ‘the most important invention of the 20th Century.’ Developed from semiconductor material, the transistor was the first device that could both amplify an electrical signal..... More
Item #4566

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

Cambridge: University Press, 1913. First edition, journal issue, of this epoch-making paper, which introduced “Bragg’s law” of X-ray crystallography. “The importance of this work cannot be overstated, for it heralded a revolution in the scientific understanding of crystals and their atomic arrangements. This discovery led to many of the most..... More
Item #4549

Lancaster, PA & Corning, NY: American Physical Society, [1923]. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, 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..... More
Item #3588

Leipzig: Barth, 1911. First edition, rare author’s presentation offprint with “Überricht von dem Verfasser” printed on the front wrapper, of Einstein’s second important paper on specific heats (the first was published in 1907). The problem of specific heat – the measure of heat or thermal energy required to increase the..... More
Item #5066

Leipzig: Barth, 1901. First edition, rare author’s presentation offprint with “Überreicht vom Verfasser” printed on front wrapper, of Einstein’s first published paper, on the thermodynamics of liquid surfaces, which Einstein completed in December 1900. In both this and his second published paper (1902), “Einstein was looking for experimental support for..... More
Item #5068

Leipzig: Barth, 1910. First edition, rare author’s presentation offprint with “Überricht von dem Verfasser” printed on the front wrapper, of Einstein’s paper on critical opalescence, his last major paper on classical statistical physics, and one of his most often-cited works. Critical opalescence is a phenomenon that occurs during continuous (second-stage)..... More
Item #5072

Leipzig: Barth, 1906. First edition, rare author’s presentation offprint with “Überreicht vom Verfasser” printed on front wrapper, of Einstein’s second paper on Brownian motion, but the first to acknowledge the relationship of his theory to Brownian motion. “In 1905, Einstein was blissfully unaware of the detailed history of Brownian motion..... More
Item #5067

[Not published: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA: 1950]. First and only edition, extremely rare, of the mimeographed notes of Feynman’s lecture course on meson theory, delivered as a visiting lecturer at Caltech (to which he moved permanently in the following year). Feynman had developed his distinctive diagrammatic approach while..... More
Item #5205

Pasadena, CA: The California Institute of Technology, 1963. Extremely rare pre-publication issue of a section of Feynman’s legendary lectures on physics, namely that devoted to electromagnetism, from Maxwell’s equations to the optical and magnetic properties of materials, and concluding with four lectures on elasticity and fluid flow. According to the..... More
Item #5135

Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology, 1960. First edition, exceptionally rare offprint, signed by Feynman, of this visionary lecture which represents the birth of nanotechnology, the field of applied science involving manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale: ‘What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating..... More
Item #5184

Berlin: Springer, 1926. First edition of Gordon’s account of the ‘Klein-Gordon equation’ (‘KG equation’ in what follows), the first attempt at unifying wave mechanics with special relativity. The KG equation was discovered by several authors independently, the first being the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein, although the equation appeared only incidentally..... More
Item #4497

Berlin: Walter de Gruyter und Co., 1939 [1942, 1944]. First edition, offprint issues, of the three fundamental papers on nuclear fission which eventually lead to the creation of the atom bomb. “…experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassman [sic] were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist..... More
Item #4152