Studies of War; Nuclear and Conventional

New York: Hill and Wang, 1962. First American Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good. viii, 242, [4] pages. Occasional Footnotes. Appendix. Cover has some wear and soiling. Pencil erasure residue on fep. Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett OM CH FRS (18 November 1897 - 13 July 1974) was a British experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism, winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948. In 1925 he became the first person to prove that radioactivity could cause the nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another. He also made a major contribution in World War II advising on military strategy and developing operational research. After graduating from Magdalene College in 1921, Blackett spent ten years working at the Cavendish Laboratory as an experimental physicist with Ernest Rutherford and in 1923 became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, a position he held until 1933. He was Director of Operational Research with the Admiralty from 1942 to 1945 Part I of this book reproduces a series of the author's substantive articles and lectures on general aspects of nuclear war, arranged in order of their first publication. All the articles are reproduced as first published except for some minor verbal clarifications and the deletion of some paragraphs which were essentially repetitive. However, a number of repetitions were deliberately left in this this repeated occurrence in the author's writings was evidence of the continued importance he attached to the points under discussion. In Part II of this work is a collection of various articles and memoranda dealing with many detailed problems of conventional warfare and the methods of handling them.