Search Results: Titles starting with F from Atticus Rare Books

Cambridge: The Royal Society, 1952. 1st Edition. STUDIES INTO THE PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY OF INSECT FLIGHT, HERE THE METABOLISM OF FLYING DESERT LOCUSTS. Weis-Fogh was the research assistant of the Nobel Prize winning physiologist August Krogh. Among other things, Weis-Fogh here proves "Some insects utilize more than one type of metabolic fuel during flight. Migratory locusts shift from carbohydrate (trehalose and glycogen) to lipid fuels during flights that last more than 30 minutes" (Weis-Fogh, 1952; Dudley, The Biomechanics of Insect Flight: Form, Function, Evolution, 169). Like Krogh, Torkel Weis-Fogh was Danish. His contributions to our understanding of insect flight have been of such import that his discovery of "the clap and fling mechanism used by very small insects" was later named the Weis-Fogh mechanism in his honor (Wikipedia). In this paper, Weis-Fogh studied the metabolism of flying desert locusts by direct analyses of the content of fat and glycogen in controls and in animals.… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1959. 1st Edition. HANDSOMELY BOUND FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST REPORT OF IN-VITRO FERTILIZATION OF AN ANIMAL. The definitive solution of the problem of in vitro fertilization of the mammalian egg and the first report of a in-vitro fertiliation in an animal was provided by the Chinese-American reproductive biologist Min Chueh Chang in 1959. Though he didn't fully understand it, Chang proves here that "oocytes fertilized in vitro were capable of developing and producing live normal young if transferred into the uterus" (Alberda, Pioneers in in vitro fertilization, 29). "For his experiment, Chang took sperm from male rabbits with specific traits not present in the female ovum donor." The presence of the male traits in the offspring provided unequivocal proof that the sperm had transmitted genetic information to the young" (Making Babies: Biomedical Technologies, 59). CONDITION & DETAILS: London: Macmillan and Co. Complete Volume 184. 4to. 10.5 by 7.5 inches (263 x 188mm). [4], clxxv,… Read More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1956. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS OF MÃœLLER'S DESCRIPTION OF THE FIELD ION MICROSCOPE USED IN THE FIRST VIEWING OF AN INDIVIDUAL ATOM. Two other significant papers are included as well: in one, Robert Hofstadter calculates the size of a proton; in the second, Chamberlain and Segrè provide the first definitive proof of antiproton annihilation (and thereby of antiproton discovery). Müller and Bahadur present "one of the most significant microscopy milestones" of the 20th century, "the first images of individual atoms obtained in a field ion microscope" (Miller, Microscopy Milestones, 1). Müller was able to obtain "an atomic image of the surface of a tungsten tip, thus becoming the first person to see atoms" (Bud, Instruments of Science, 385). "For the first time in history, individual atoms and their arrangement on a surface could be seen" (International Institute of Nanotechnology). In this paper, the authors include the first images and… Read More

FIRST EDITION (FULL VOLUME 52) OF THE PHYSICAL REVIEW HOUSING 6 IMPORTANT PHYSICS PAPERS. In "Field Theory of Nuclear Interaction," Nicholas Kemmer proposes the first of two alternative currents required for electroweak synthesis. In "Visible Radiation Produced by Electrons," Pavel Cherenkov describes the theory of Cherenkov radiation, the effect wherein light emitted by a transparent medium when charged particles pass through it at a speed greater than the speed of light in the medium. "Cherenkov observed the emission of blue light from a bottle of water subjected to radioactive bombardment. This phenomenon, associated with charged atomic particles moving at velocities greater than the speed of light in the local medium, proved to be of great importance in subsequent experimental work in nuclear physics, and for the study of cosmic rays" (Wikipedia). In "On the Mathematical Description of Light Nuclei by the Method of Resonating Group Structure" contains Wheeler's important introduction of the… Read More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1947. 1st Edition. BOUND FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE of the paper in which Lamb announced the fine structure of the hydrogen atom, discovered the discrepancy in electromagnetic theory called the Lamb Shift, and began the revolution that led to Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). Full volume with many other papers of significance throughout. QED basically describes how light and matter interact, addressing it as a small difference between energy levels of two orbitals of the hydrogen atom that was unexplained and at odds with prevailing electromagnetic theory, then Dirac's quantum theory of the electron. Lamb explains "electromagnetic attraction and repulsion... in terms of the exchange of photons between charged particles" (Peacock, The Quantum Revolution, 100). The Lamb Shift, then, is a small difference between energy levels of two orbitals of the hydrogen atom that was unexplained and at odds with prevailing electromagnetic theory, then Dirac's quantum theory of… Read More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1947. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE IN ORIGINAL WRAPS of the paper in which Lamb announced the fine structure of the hydrogen atom, discovered the discrepancy in electromagnetic theory called the Lamb Shift, and began the revolution that led to Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). QED basically describes how light and matter interact, addressing it as a small difference between energy levels of two orbitals of the hydrogen atom that was unexplained and at odds with prevailing electromagnetic theory, then Dirac's quantum theory of the electron. Lamb explains "electromagnetic attraction and repulsion... in terms of the exchange of photons between charged particles" (Peacock, The Quantum Revolution, 100). The Lamb Shift, then, is a small difference between energy levels of two orbitals of the hydrogen atom that was unexplained and at odds with prevailing electromagnetic theory, then Dirac's quantum theory of the electron. This small difference, caused by the… Read More

Chicago: University of Chicago, 1922. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF THE 1st APPEARANCE IN PRINT OF THE TERM "DARK MATTER" & FIRST SUGGESTION OF ITS EXISTENCE. This paper, First Attempt at a Theory of the Arrangement and Motion of the Sidereal System, represents a culmination of Kapteyn's life work and he died shortly before its publication. In it, he uses the term dark matter to denote invisible matter the existence of which is otherwise suggested by only by gravity. He further suggests that when his theory is perfected it may be possible to determine the amount of dark matter from its gravitational effect. Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn (1851-1922) was a Dutch astronomer who extensively studied the Milky Way and who discovered evidence of galactic rotation. "In the beginning of the 20th century little was known about the overall structure of the Milky Way system... One unsolved problem was the possible existence of absorbing material near the plane of the Galaxy, which distorts distance estimates of… Read More

Lancaster: American Institute of Physics, 1939. 1st Edition. Single Journal Issue in Original Wrappers, 1st edition. Offered here is Bohr and Wheeler's November 1939 paper confirming their predictions in the September "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission" paper (which we offer separately). While this work is one of Bohr's three major 1939 papers on fission, the September paper is the more important of the two. BOHR & WHEELER'S "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission," published in September of 1939 and which we offer separately, is the first fully worked out theory of nuclear fission and it laid the groundwork for atomic and hydrogen bombs. "The paper is a masterpiece of clear thinking and lucid writing. It reveals, at the center of the mystery of fission, a tiny world where everything can be calculated and everything understood. The tiny world is a nucleus of uranium 236, formed when a neutron is freshly captured by a nucleus of uranium 235. The uranium 236 nucleus sits precisely on the border between… Read More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1959. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS. In this paper, Dirac began to apply his methods to the gravitational field. "As a result of simplifications which he introduced [here], it became easy to show that the fourth dynamical constraint is consistent with the others, and the formal theory achieved for the first time a state of technical completion. It was then possible to begin asking ‘What does it all mean?'" (Fang, Quantum Cosmology, 1115). "The theory of gravitation is usually expressed in terms of an arbitrary system of coordinates. This results in the appearance of weak equations connecting the Hamiltonian dynamical variables that describe a state at a certain time, leading to supplementary conditions on the wave function after quantization. To remove the difficulty one must eliminate the weak equations by fixing the coordinate system. The general procedure for this elimination is here described" (Dirac). CONDITION & DETAILS: Lancaster:… Read More

London: Macmillan & Sons, 1967. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, FULL VOLUME. Shortly after Wilkinson and Partridge published the first tentative sightings of CMB anistropies, Joseph Silk, in this paper, demonstrated that only very large density irregularities in the early universe (larger than 1,013 solar masses) would survive and be visible in the CMB. We separately offer the Wilkinson & Partridge paper as well as the related Rees & Sciama paper. The Moyer and Landauer influential paper explores the process by which numerical judgements are made. SILK: The Gruber Foundation, writing about Silk in their Cosmology Prize Laureate Profile, noted the following: ""The validation of the Big Bang interpretation of the universe arrived, in 1965, just as a 22-year-old Joseph Silk was entering the field of cosmology. The discovery came in the form of an observation of microwave radiation suffusing all of space in every direction. This cosmic microwave background, or CMB, matched a theoretical prediction of what… Read More

FULL VOLUME 1st EDITION OF THREE LANDMARK PAPERS, each of seminal import in the history of physics. FEYNMAN'S "Forces in molecules" is the first edition of Feynman's undergraduate thesis, the paper that began to establish his name in physics. Published when he was just twenty-one, his work here a fundamental discovery "that has played an important role in theoretical chemistry and condensed matter physics" (Selected Papers, p. 1). This extraordinary work documents the first steps in original research of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Feynman showed in this paper that "the force on an atom's nucleus is no more or less than the electrical force from the surrounding field of charged electrons - the electrostatic force. Once the distribution of charge has been calculated quantum mechanically, then from that point forward quantum mechanics disappears from the picture. The problem becomes classical; the nuclei can be treated as static points of mass and charge. Feynman's… Read More

New York: AAAS, 2012. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS OF TWO IMPORTANT PAPERS ON THE GIANT-IMPACT THEORY, THE CURRENTLY FAVORED SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS FOR THE FORMATION OF THE MOON. The Giant-Impact Theory is also know as the Giant-Impact Hypothesis, the Big Splash, and the The Impact. "The giant impact believed to have formed the Earth-Moon system has long been accepted as canon. However, a major challenge to the theory has been that the Earth and Moon have identical oxygen isotope compositions, even though earlier impact models indicated they should differ substantially" (Phys Org Web Portal, 17 October 2012). The significance of Canup's paper is that it "accounts for this similarity in composition while also yielding an appropriate mass for Earth and the Moon" (ibid). Motivated by the work of others on the early dynamical history of the Moon, Robin Canup, working at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO, developed new models that involve much larger impactors than were… Read More

1st Edition. THE FOUR-COLOUR (Color) PROBLEM (OR THEOREM) IS "THE FIRST MAJOR THEOREM TO BE PROVED USING A COMPUTER" (Lamb, Having Fun with the 4-Color Theorem, Scientific American, March 1, 2013). Because the problem had "resisted the attempts of able mathematicians for over a century...when it was successfully proved in 1976 the ‘computer proof' was controversial [because] it did not allow scrutiny in the conventional way" (Crilly, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 22 Sept. 2005). "The Four-Color Theorem states that any map in a plane can be colored using four-colors in such a way that regions sharing a common boundary (other than a single point) do not share the same color. The problem, or question, is well-known in mathematics and is certainly the most famous problem in the field of "discrete" mathematics. Included in a custom case are first editions of the first printed paper of the problem, this by Arthur Cayley in 1879, and three papers by Appel and Haken (an announcement of the proof… Read More

Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard Ltd, 1953. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN PAPER WRAPS OF TWO HISTORIC PAPERS BY FRANCIS CRICK PRESENTING THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT USING SECONDARY-STRUCTURE ELEMENTS TO MODEL THE TERTIARY STRUCTURE OF A PROTEIN - THE ALPHA-HELICAL COILED COIL. "Crick's molecular model for the coiled coil - entailing left-handed supercoils, heptad repeats and knobs-into-holes packing - has been seen as the definitive account of this structure" (Gruber, Another 50th Anniversary, Trends in Biochemical Science, 12, pp. 679). "In these papers, [Crick presents] a parametric model for coiled coils of two and three parallel -helices, supercoiled in the opposite direction of the helices and held together by a defined side-chain packing geometry. Particularly noteworthy is Crick's anticipation that packing would be driven by the hydrophobic nature of side-chains and that, therefore, the sequence of coiled coils would show a periodicity of polar and non-polar residues. This occurred at a time when the… Read More

Lancaster: American Physical Society, 1927. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF "ONE OF THE FIRST EXPERIMENTAL REPORTS OF CHAOS" (Tsatsos, Theoretical and Numerical Study of the Van der Pol Equation, 9). Van der Pol and van der Mark note the appearance "of ‘irregular noise' before transition from one sub-harmonical regime to another... [this being] one of the first observations of chaotic oscillations" (ibid). Other scientific historians have gone further, citing this as "the experimental discovery of chaotic dynamics" (Rosser, Chaos Theory Before Lorenz, 9). The Dutch electrical engineer Balthasar van der Pol began with a vacuum tube. "A modern physics student would explore the behavior of such an oscillator by looking at the line traced on the screen of an oscilloscope. Van der Pol did not have an oscilloscope, so he had to monitor his circuit by listening to changing tones in a telephone handset. He was pleased to discover regularities in the behavior as he changed the current… Read More

London: Royal Society, 1939. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT ISSUE IN ORIGINAL WRAPS of an "unforgettable contribution to neurobiology" (Wikipedia). John Z. Young, a pioneering cellular neuroscientist and "one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century," was the first to recognize something that would have revolutionize the treatment of those injured in battle: the ability for regrowth in the damaged nerves of squid and octopi (Lichtman and Sanes, "Translation Neuroscience," Journal of Experimental Biology, 209, 3485-3487). Young's discovery of the squid giant synapse, the chemical synaptic junction whose activation "triggers the synchronous contraction of the mantle musculature that is responsible for the forceful ejection of a jet stream of water from the mantle" marked the beginning of important biomedical research that would aid in efforts to treat wartime injuries. "Of all the non-fatal injuries that occur in battle, the most disabling are neural because of the limited… Read More