the third and final version of rutherford's great textbook on radioactivityFirst edition, Rutherford's third version of 'the first textbook on radioactivity, surveying contemporary knowledge of the entire field' (Dibner, 100 Books Famous in Science 51). An attractive copy and uncommon in the dust jacket.Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was the New Zealand-born the physicist who both discovered the structure of the atom and was the first to split one. His first book on the field, Radio-Activity, was published in 1904, but the intervening years saw such a dramatic expansion of knowledge that the next version, Radioactive Substances and Their Radiations, published in 1913, was 'an entirely new work' (introduction), retaining only a few pages from the earlier text. This third version, published in 1930, is another complete reworking, taking into account the changing availability of information published in other sources and the contemporary needs of researchers in the field.First edition; 8vo; 12 plates, diagrams and equations within the text, endpapers partially tanned, contents very lightly toned; original green cloth, titles to spine gilt, cloth fresh, a very good copy in the jacket that is lightly rubbed and toned with a few nicks and short splits; 588pp.
