Search Results: Titles starting with P from Atticus Rare Books

BOUND FIRST EDITION OF HERMANN BONDI'S SEMINAL 1957 THOUGHT EXPERIMENT DEMONSTRATING THAT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES INDEED CARRY ENERGY, and furthermore that in order to carry energy (and momentum), gravitational waves must be nonlinear. Gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of spacetime, were first predicted by Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity. Bondi's paper firmly established the physical reality of gravitational waves; his later work in the early 1960s (and in papers we also offer) would put "their physical properties such as energy and momentum flux on a rigorous mathematical footing" (Denef, Science, Feb. 2016). In February 2016, the September 2015 detection of gravitational waves - waves first predicted by Einstein over a hundred years ago - was announced. Inspired by conversations with and a presentation by British theoretical physicist Felix A. E. Pirani early in the same year, Bondi began to study gravitational radiation, "in particular the question of quantifying the energy… Read More

Washington DC: Spartan Books, 1965. 1st Edition. Designed by Seymour Cray and James E. Thornton, manufactured by Control Data Corporation 6600 (CDC 6600) was the world's first successful supercomputer. Thornton, the author of the first paper, was personally responsible for most of the detailed design of the Control Data model 6600 system and is considered the "hidden genius" of the 6600" (Wikipedia). "The 6600 had 400,000 transistors and more than 100 miles of wiring. In addition to a blazingly fast floating-point processor, it had 10" functional units and 10 ‘peripherals and control processors' that did housekeeping and input/output tasks at the same time" (CDC 6600's, Computer History; Jadhav, Advanced Computer Architecture and Computing, 9). CONDITION & DETAILS: Illustrated throughout with technical drawings. Previous owner's signature on front paste-down. Bound in blue cloth; silver lettered on spine and front board; tightly bound with slight rubbing at the edges. Bright and clean throughout.… Read More

London: Harrison & Sons. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITIONS of Francis Galton's important 1890 and 1891 papers providing a scientific basis and model for fingerprint identification and analysis, offered here in separate leather bound volumes. Galton provides a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis and identification and encourages its use; the exhaustive statistical models he provides proved enough to encourage law enforcement to begin to use fingerprints and courts to then sanction that use. Note that we offer separately Galton's 1888 paper developing and demonstrating what would become known as the correlation coefficient (the statistical concept of correlation or, at publication, 'Co-relation'). The first paper is an ‘Abstract' of a paper appearing in the Transactions in the same year. The second paper is a first edition, first printing. The papers can be viewed as the basis for his Galton's "Finger-Prints" of 1892 (Printing and the Mind of Man 376). Galton was able to establish that… Read More

FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. Gerard Bond and his colleagues identify a pervasive millennial-scale climate cycle operating independently of the glacial-interglacial climate state. Based on geologic tracers of drift ice in the North Atlantic, they postulate the theory of 1470-year climate cycles in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene eras. CONDITION & DETAILS: Washington DC: The American Association for the Advancement of Science. 8vo. Original pictorial wrappers. The issue bears the address label of Gary L. Bennett. Bennett's work at the NASA, the DOE, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and at NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications) is well-detailed on Wikipedia. Bright and clean. Near fine condition inside and out.

New York: American Physical Society, 2000. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION ISSUES IN ORIGINAL WRAPS TWO PAPERS BY HÄNSCH & HALL FOR THEIR NOBEL PRIZE WINNING WORK ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF LASER-BASED PRECISION SPECTROSCOPY AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT OF THE FREQUENCY COMB TECHNIQUE. American physicist John Lewis "Jan" Hall and German physicist Theodor Wolfgang Hänsch shared one half of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for these "contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique. Their laser-based precision spectroscopy meant that atoms could again be employed as references to stabilize the frequency of laser light. In other words, scientists could now "tune a laser wavelength to an optical transition within an atom" (Hessmo, "Laser-based precision spectroscopy and the optical frequency comb technique", Heidelberg, 15 October, 2005). Precision spectroscopy is the ability to measure a frequency accurately. Precision laser spectroscopy creates… Read More

London: Royal Society, 1827. 1st Edition. Handsomely bound full volume of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 117, 1827, Parts I & II. The volume includes 15 plates and is fully indexed by both author and subject. Papers by the following are included: William Snow Harris, Davies Gilbert, Everard Home (3), I. Harwood, George Biddell Airy, Samuel Hunter Christie (2), Henry Foster, William Ritchie (2), Thomas Bell, Robert Woodhouse, Thomas Thomson, Peter Barlow II, William Yarrell, William Morgan, Thomas Henderson, Alexander Phillip Wilson Phillip, FRS Miller, William Prout, John Herschel (a correction to a prior paper). As well, it was John Herschel who presented many of the papers in this volume to the Royal Society. CONDITION & DETAILS. Complete Volume 117, Parts I & II. Ex-libris bearing two Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland stamps on the title page; no other markings. 15 plates. Quarto. (10.5 x 8.5 inches; 263 x 408mm). [vi], 2, [388pp.], Meteorological Journal (16pp), [Index… Read More

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1922. 1st Edition. SCARCE CONTEMPORARY JOURNAL REPRINT "A Photo-electric Theory of Color Vision" is Clark's challenge to the other theories holding sway at that time; among them, that of Young-Helmholz, the Hering and Ladd-Franklin theory, Leboucq's, Joly's, and Cajal's. CONDITION & DETAILS: Baltimore: John Hopkins University. Bound in original paper wraps with very minor edge wear. Interior and exterior in very good condition.

London: William Wesley & Son, 1894. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION. EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE. In the late 19th century, George Cornish Sutton Higgs, a British watchmaker and optician proficient in the sciences, built an extraordinary spectrograph and employed it to greatly advance the application of photography to the study of solar spectra. The result of that work is offered here -- "one of the best atlases of the solar spectrum then produced" (Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 505).   Higgs formulated no new theories to explain the natural world, he did use his skill in optics to "construct one of the finest solar spectrographs then in existence"; he then used that invention to follow "in the footsteps of others, [gradually working to refine] their techniques with greater care and precision" (ibid, 506). " Higgs conducted his studies in a room of his small suburban house, using homemade apparatus. The accuracy of his line determinations and quality of his photographs were praised by leading… Read More

1963. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF THE 2 Volumes including ROY GLAUBER'S TWO NOBLE PRIZE WINNING PAPERS PRESENTING HIS QUANTUM THEORY OF OPTICAL COHERENCE -- the quantum mechanical basis of different types of light. "No real in-depth theory of light based on quantum theory existed before Roy Glauber established the foundation for quantum optics in 1963" (Nobel Prize Committee). In the first paper, Glauber's seminal theory, at first controversial but now widely used in the field of quantum optics, differentiates between laser (coherent) light and normal (blackbody) light. In the second, also published in 1963, Glauber wrote: "We have developed general quantum mechanical methods for the investigation of such correlation effects and shall present here results for the distribution of the number of photons counted in an incoherent beam" (Glauber, 1963). Arguing that photon correlation experiments must be based on a consistent application of quantum electrodynamics, Glauber showed how the quantum theory… Read More

London: Macmillian & Sons, 1951. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF A NUMBER OF IMPORTANT PAPERS. ALSO INCLUDED: Armenteros, R.; Barker, K. H. "Decay of Neutral V-Particles" WITH Mackay, D. M., Calculating Machines and Human Thought WITH Bragg, W. L. Elimination of the Unwanted Image in Diffraction Microscopy WITH Martyn, D. G. The Theory of Magnetic Storms and Auroras. CONDITION & DETAILS: London: Macmillian & Sons. Complete volume. 4to (10.25.x 7.5 inches; 256 x 186mm). 1076 pp. & lv name and title index. Ex-libris bearing only discrete stamps on the flyleaf, pastedown and title page; no spine markings whatsoever. Bound in blue cloth, gilt-lettered at the spine. Solidly and tightly bound; light rubbing at the edges. Very clean inside and out. Very good condition.

London, 1851. FIRST DESCRIPTION IN ENGLISH of FOUCAULT'S 1st MECHANICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE EARTH'S ROTATION, FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. Also included is BOOLE'S FIRST PAPER ON THE LOGIC OF PROBABILITY. FOUCAULT: Copernicus explained the daily diurnal rotation of the earth on its polar axis in 1543, however it was Foucault, 300 years later, who first demonstrated it. "On February 3, 1851, a 32-year-old Frenchman—who'd dropped out of medical school and dabbled in photography—definitively demonstrated that the Earth indeed rotated, surprising the Parisian scientific establishment. Acting on a hunch, Léon Foucault determined he could use a pendulum to illustrate the effect of the Earth's movement. He called together a group of scientists, enticing them with a note declaring, "You are invited to see the Earth turn." Foucault hung a pendulum from the ceiling of the Meridian Room of the Paris Observatory. As it swept through the air, it traced a pattern that effectively proved the world was spinning… Read More

1962. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, RARE OFFPRINT OF AN IMPORTANT LECTURE DELIVERED BY BONDI AT OXFORD IN MAY OF 1962; this is the first printed version. The following represent just a few scientists whose work Bondi speaks of in his lecture: Michelson-Morley, Milne, Lorentz, Einstein, Maxwell, Wheeler, Feynman, Hogarth, Penrose, Gold, Percival, Carathéodory. In 1957 and in a paper we offer separately, Hermann Bondi demonstrated that gravitation waves indeed carry energy, and furthermore that in order to carry energy (and momentum), gravitational waves must be nonlinear. Gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of spacetime, were first predicted by Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity. In February 2016, the September 2015 detection of gravitational waves - waves first predicted by Einstein over a hundred years ago - was announced. Bondi's 1957 paper firmly established the physical reality of gravitational waves; his later work in the early 1960s - and this is one of those papers --… Read More

1899. 1st Edition. FIRST PUBLISHED ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE ELECTRON IS A SUBATOMIC PARTICLE. Mention of J. J. Thomson's report at the 1899 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement in Science in Dover "On the existence of masses smaller than atoms," and published in the October 12 issue of Nature included here is the first published announcement that the electron is a subatomic particle. Beginning in 1883, J. J. Thomson "had engaged himself in developing an atomic theory of electric discharge through gases" (Wagh, Essentials of Physics, 421). As his work progressed through his various discoveries, however, there was great reluctance to accept the idea of a body having smaller weight than an atom of hydrogen (this because the atom was then thought to be the ultimate, indestructible constituent of matter). It was not until Thomson read the aforementioned paper at the meeting in Dover, that his deeply interested but unconvinced audience began to accept that Thomson's experimental evidence… Read More

Berlin: Druck und Verlag von G. Reimer. 1st Edition. Single Volume 1847 published in 1850. FIRST EDITION OF HELMHOLTZ'S FIRST FULLY COMPREHENSIVE STATEMENT OF THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS - that energy can be converted from one form to another with the interaction of heat, work and internal energy, but it cannot be created nor destroyed, under any circumstances. Two volume set 1845 volume, published in 1847 volume offered separately. In 1845, in a paper on animal heat that predated this one by two years, Helmholtz made his first statement on his ‘conservation of force'; he would later note that his 1845 findings really belonged in the work offered here, his 1847 fully detailed statement (Garber, The Language of Physics, 293). Note that in a separate listing, we offer both the 1845 and 1847 volumes together; this listing, again, is for the 1847 comprehensive statement. In the 1845 review paper on animal heat, Helmholtz noted that "‘if we substitute the motion theory of heat for the material… Read More

London: Taylor & Francis, 1919. 1st Edition. HANDSOMELY BOUND FIRST EDITION OF FRANCIS ASTON'S INVENTION OF THE MASS SPECTOGRAPH, AN INSTRUMENT USED OBTAIN & RECORD THE SPECTRAL CONTENT OF LIGHT. Aston was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry ""for his discovery, by means if his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule" (Nobel Committee). Aston's invention separated and measured wavelengths in electromagnetic radiation, measuring the relative amounts of radiation at each wavelength. Francis William Aston was an English physicist and chemist. Working at the Cavendish Laboratory, he began to confront the problem of the separation of the isotopes of neon. Thomson had earlier invented a parabola apparatus, but Aston wanted his invention to produce intense, clear photographs, meaning that he would need to focus a range of speeds at one point. To achieve this, Aston used a different arrangement of electric and… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1954. 1st Edition. First edition of Gamow's highly significant discovery of four different kinds of amino-acids - nucleotides - that were capable of information storage and transfer within a living cell. Gamow here proposes the ‘genetic code' and proves that "life is guided by information and inorganic processes are not" (Yockey, Information Theory, 8). "Gamow conjectured that DNA provided a direct template for proteins. When looked at in a certain way, Gamow contended, DNA could be seen to have twenty different cavities along its length, a number equal to that of the common amino acids" (The Francis Crick Papers, Defining the Genetic Coding Problem). Gamow's work was first printed in this volume of Nature in the form of a letter to Watson, ironically, the first positive response to the discovery of DNA that he and Crick had received. "In early 1954, less than a year after J. D. Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helical structure of DNA, Gamow recognized that the… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1932. 1st Edition. FULL VOLUME 1st EDITION of James Chadwick's initial speculation about the "possible" existence of the neutron, a subatomic particle with no electrical charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. When, three months later, Chadwick affirmed his discovery, his assertion rewrote then current beliefs in nuclear science: he had proven that elementary particles devoid of any electrical charge existed. "For the discovery of the neutron," Chadwick was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics (Nobel Prize Committee). "The discovery of the neutron made by Chadwick led to a much deeper understanding of the nature of matter, explaining for example why isotopes of elements exist. It also inspired Enrico Fermi and other physicists to investigate nuclear reactions produced by neutrons, leading to the discovery of nuclear fission" (Hutchinson, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, I, 227). This discovery provided a new tool for inducing atomic disintegration, since… Read More

Princeton University Press, 2008. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF THE CELEBRATED GREEN-TAO THEOREM. The theorem states that the prime numbers contain arbitrary long arithmetic progressions. For example, 5, 11, 17, 23, 29 is a sequence of five primes equally spaced, and so in arithmetic progression, the Green-Tao theorem says that you can find sequences of equally spaced primes which are as long as you like, though the spacing between them might be bigger" (IAS, Green-Tao Theorem). A long-held and almost folkloric conjecture was that primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. The problem can be traced back to investigations of Lagrange and Waring from around 1770. Green and Tao prove "there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of primes. There are three major ingredients. The first is Szemeredi's theorem, which asserts that any subset of the integers of positive density contains progressions of arbitrary length. The second, which is the main new ingredient of… Read More

Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1918. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF EINSTEIN'S DISCUSSION OF MACH'S PRINCIPLE, a theory Einstein names and one which was historically important to the inspiration that would lead to general relativity. Mach's principle states that "local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe" (Wikipedia). To Einstein, Mach's principle posited the belief that inertia originates in a kind of interaction between bodies. "So strongly did Einstein believe at that time in the relativity of inertia that [in this paper] he stated [it] as being on equal footing three principles on which a satisfactory theory of gravitation should rest: (1.) The principle of relativity as expressed by general covariance. (2.) The principle of equivalence. (3.) Mach's principle (the first time this term entered the literature)" (Pais, The Science of Albert Einstein, 287). Einstein brought Mach's principle into mainstream physics while working on general relativity. Indeed… Read More

London: Royal Society, 1938. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST CORRECT "SOLUTION TO THE MANY-BODY PROBLEM IN CELESTIAL MECHANICS UNDER EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF GRAVITY FOR THE SPECIAL CASE OF POINT MASSES" (History of Physics: The Wenner Collection). Eddington and Clark's equations "are now frequently used for high precision tracking of planetary orbits and spacecraft movements within the Solar System" (ibid). "The problem of the secular acceleration of the center of mass of binary systems has a checkered history. Levi-Civita (1937) first pointed out that general relativity predicted a secular acceleration in the direction of the periastron of the orbit, and found a binary system candidate in which he felt the effect might one day be observable. Eddington and Clark (1938) repeated the calculation using de Sitter's (1916) n-body equations of motion. After first finding a secular acceleration of opposite sign to that of Levi-Civita, they then discovered an error in de Sitter's equations, and… Read More