A Star Called the Sun.

First edition, first printing. A lovely example of George Gamow's A Star Called the Sun.

Physicist George Gamow (1904-1968) was the first to explain radioactivity as a quantum mechanical process, developed the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus, and was an early proponent of Georges Lemaitre's Big Bang theory. He studied the physics of stars and wrote a number of popular science books, the second being The Birth and Death of the Sun, which presented cutting-edge astrophysics when it was published in 1940. By the 1960s so much new information was available that he revisited the topic in this book, A Star Called the Sun, significantly rewriting the original work but reusing some of his original illustrations and the stylish jacket art by Boris Artzybasheff.

First edition, first printing; 8vo; double-sided colour frontispiece, illustrations throughout the text, text block clean; original blue cloth, titles to spine block in gilt, sun design to upper board in blind, pictorial endpapers, small dampstains to bottom corners, a very good copy in the lightly rubbed and dulled jacket, small chip to upper corner of front panel, small dampstains to bottom corners of front and rear panels; 208pp.