'The Production of Soft Secondaries by Mesotrons'

early particle physics

First edition, the journal issue in the original wrappers. This early and significant particle physics paper was part of the attempt to explain the make-up of cosmic rays and align their behaviour with the contemporary model of quantum electrodynamics. This copy from the library of Manhattan project physicist Robert Brode, head of the team that designed the bomb fuses at Los Alamos, with his pencilled ownership signature on the upper cover.

During the 1930s the theoretical work of Japanese physicist Hideki Ykawa, and observational evidence of cosmic rays gathered by Seth Neddermeyer and Carl David Anderson, made it clear that there was at least one previously unknown particle bigger than an electron but smaller than a proton. Initially termed mesotrons, and then mesons, it was eventually determined that they were in fact two different particles, the muon and the pion.

'Playing a leading role in both the creation and the clearing up of these confusions, and thus being there at the birth of what has grown into the (for most people) utterly bewildering new discipline of particle physics, were Oppenheimer and his students' (Monk, Inside the Center, p. 227). The present paper 'analysed the "soft component" of cosmic rays as being made up of electrons and gamma rays that were released in mesotron "showers"' (Monk, p. 288).

First edition, complete number; illustrations within the text; original green wrappers printed in black, pencilled ownership signature of Robert Brode to the upper cover, toned along the spine and edges and lightly rubbed, an excellent copy.