The Cyclotron.

inscribed to a colleague

First edition, first printing, of what is likely the first conventionally published book on the Berkeley cyclotron. Presentation copy inscribed from the author on the front free endpaper, 'Arnold Kramish, with warmest good wishes from a very old friend, Wilfrid Mann'. Rare inscribed and with the jacket.

Wilfrid B. Mann (1908-2001) was an eminent radionuclide physicist. Having earned his bachelor's degree at Imperial College London, in 1930, he carried out graduate research with Ernest O. Lawrence at the cyclotron in Berkeley, where he discovered the medically important radionuclide gallium-67. In the preface to the present volume he writes warmly of his time there, 'Stranded without a cyclotron to play with, I have felt compelled to reminisce, and this monograph is essentially in memory of very happy days spent in the laboratory of Professor Ernest Lawrence during two years of sojourn in Berkeley'.

Mann's thesis advisor, G.P. Thompson, was in charge of the Tube Alloys project, the British nuclear program that was incorporated into the Manhattan Project. Mann was assigned 'as the physicist to the British Central Scientific Office at the British Embassy in Washington, DC. At the embassy, Mann's interactions with his coworkers Kim Philby and Guy Burgess gained him considerable notoriety when Philby and Burgess were implicated in the biggest spy scandal of mid-century' (Coursey, Physics Today obituary, American Institute of Physics, October 1, 2001). Mann was able to conclusively prove that he was not 'the fifth man' and was further exonerated by the US government.

After the war he served as British delegate to the UN's Atomic Energy Commission and was head of the radioactivity department at the US National Bureau of Standards. 'For 40 years, Mann was one of the most influential researchers in his field. At NBS, he developed a full suite of experimental techniques for standardization of nuclides... He made early, definitive measurements of the half-lives of tritium and carbon-14, and built an isotope separator to prepare isotopically pure standards of krypton-85 and xenon-133' (Coursey).

The recipient of this copy, Arnold Kramish (1923-2010), was a fellow physicist and employee of the Manhattan Project. He later worked at the Atomic Energy Commission as a CIA liaison, assisted in the design of the hydrogen bomb, and advised the State Department and UNESCO.

First edition, first printing, inscribed presentation copy; 8vo; photographic frontispiece, diagrams within the text, contents fresh; original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt, publisher's device to upper board in blind, an excellent copy in the lightly rubbed jacket with some small chips from the corners and edges; 92pp.