"THE BASIS OF AN ENTIRELY NEW SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE": RUTHERFORD ANNOUNCES THE "SPLITTING" OF THE ATOM, 1919
RUTHERFORD, Ernest. Collision of Alpha Particles with Light Atoms. IN: Philosophical Magazine, Volume 37—Sixth Series, pp. 537-87. London: Taylor and Francis, 1919. Octavo, original blue stiff wrappers. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box.
First edition of the first appearance of Rutherford's pioneering article about the effects of alpha particles bombarding the nitrogen atom—marking the birth of the nuclear age. A fine copy in the original wrappers.
This scarce issue of Philosophical Magazine contains the first announcement of the 'splitting' of an atom. "Ernest Marsden had observed in 1915 that bombarding air with alpha particles appeared to generate some particles with exceptionally long range. Rutherford decided to verify the nature of these particles, and four years later published the present paper" (Norman 1873). Rutherford's experiments were "an alchemist's dream. He had already shown how atoms are not indivisible… Now he reasoned that it should be possible to transmute one kind of atom into another if one or more particles could be liberated from its nucleus. To this end he bombarded atmospheric nitrogen with alpha particles… This experiment produced the first instance of deliberate atomic fission" (Simmons, Scientific 100, 102-3). Upon noting that the bombardment of nitrogen atoms dislodged a single proton from the normally 'stable atom,' Rutherford stated in Part IV of the present article (An Anomalous Effect in Nitrogen) that "we must conclude that the nitrogen atom is disintegrated under the intense forces developed in a close collision with a swift alpha particle" (Norman 1873). In other words, Rutherford performed nuclear disintegration, an accomplishment that formed "the basis of all subsequent work in atomic physics and chemistry" (PMM 411). Rutherford was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances" (Nobel: The Man and His Prizes, 309). Rutherford's article was published in four parts, all present here in the same volume: Hydrogen (537-61), Velocity of the Hydrogen Atom (562-71), Nitrogen and Oxygen Atoms (571-80), An Anomalous Effect in Nitrogen (581-87). PMM 411.
A fine copy.