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-Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons "The charge of a uranium nucleus, we found, was indeed large enough to overcome the effect of the surface tension almost completely; so the uranium nucleus might indeed resemble a very wobble unstable drop, ready to divide itself at the slightest provocation, such as the impact of a single neutron..." -Otto Frisch FIRST PRINTINGS IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of three critically important articles documenting the discovery of nuclear fission, including Meitner and Frisch's "Disintegration of Uranium by Neutron", the first announcement of the new process. PMM 422b,c,d. "Experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassman were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist who had fled to Copenhagen to escape religious persecution. She and her nephew, O.R. Frisch, working in Niels Bohr's laboratory, found the true explanation of these phenomenon. The interpolation of a neutron into the the nucleus of a uranium atom caused it to divide into two parts and to release energy amounting to about 200,000,000 electron volts. This process bore such a close similarity to the division of a living cell that Frisch suggested the use of the term 'fission' to describe it." (Printing and the Mind of Man 422b, 422c). In the third article in the collection, Halban, Joliot and Kowarski established the theoretical possibility of a self-perpetuating reaction chain" (PMM 422d).
MEITNER,
Lise and FRISCH, Dr. O.R. Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New
Type of Nuclear Reaction, in Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3615, pp. 239-40.
February 11, 1939. WITH: FRISCH, Dr. O.R. Physical Evidence for the
Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment, in Nature, Vol. 143,
No. 3616, p 276. February 18, 1939. WITH: VON HALBAN, H.; JOLIOT, F.;
and KOWARSKI, L. Liberation of Neutrons in the Nuclear Explosion of
Uranium, in Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3620, pp. 470-1. March 18, 1939.
Octavo, original wrappers; custom cloth box. Three issues. Some wear to
wrapper edges, particularly on first issue. $2600. |
