Stars & Atoms.

Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,, 1927. First edition, first impression, of Eddington's discursive analysis of the atomic makeup of stars and nebulae. Stars & Atoms derived from public lectures and addresses delivered at King's College, London, and at a meeting of the British Association in Oxford in 1926. This copy contains the pencil signature on the front free endpaper, and brief pencil annotations to pp. 15-16, of Thomas Graeme Nelson Haldane (1897-1981), a Scottish engineer. Haldane worked on the development of the National Grid and latterly received the James Hawkesley Gold Medal for developing the geo-thermal energy infrastructure of New Zealand. In 1927, Haldane was employed at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge: he completed his undergraduate studies at Trinity College while Eddington was a fellow there. Haldane's interest in Eddington's study of solar matter and energy is intriguing in view of his subsequent work on energy infrastructures, and planetary energy in particular. A newspaper article on "The Frontiers of the Universe", dated by annotation to 4 April, 1928, is loosely inserted. Octavo. Original dark blue cloth, spine lettered, ruled, and with publisher's device in gilt, covers panelled in blind, outer and lower edges uncut. With 6 half-tone plates, tables and full-page graph in the text. Light bumping and rubbing, slight lean to spine, faint sunning to head of rear cover, sporadic moderate foxing: a very good copy.