Artificial Production of Fast Protons, p. 242 in Nature 129, 13 February 1932. THE FIRST PARTICLE ACCELERATOR

COCKCROFT, John Douglas & WALTON, Ernest Thomas Sinton

Published by London: Macmillan, 1932

About this Item

First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of the first published account of the first operational particle accelerator, with which Cockcroft and Walton 'split the atom' two months later, an achievement for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1951. "[Cockcroft and Walton] provided the nuclear physicists with a new, powerful instrument to obtain controlled disintegration of nuclei" (Mehra & Rechenberg, The Historical Development of Quantum Theory, Vol. 6, p. 792). "The Cockcroft Walton machine was the first atom smasher, later so called by the press" (Brandt, The Harvest of a Century, p. 222). The first to make use of the instrument were Cockcroft and Walton themselves. "1932 saw the announcement of the first apparatus for artificially accelerating atomic particles to high energies: the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator. And, barely a month later, beams of high-energy protons produced by this machine were used to initiate the disintegration of lithium nuclei" (Nature Physics Portal). "This experiment was the first transmutation of an element using artificially accelerated particles, for which Cockcroft and Walton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1951. A year after this experiment, the eminent Harvard physicist Kenneth Bainbridge pointed out that it was also the first experimental test of Einstein s mass-energy equivalence E = mc2: "The results of atomic mass measurements in cooperation with disintegration experiments furnish an experimental proof of the equivalence of mass and energy deduced theoretically by Einstein. The best example of this is given by the experiments of Cockcroft and Walton" (quoted in Beller et al, Einstein in Context, p. 198). Large 8vo, pp. xlix-lii, 217-232, iv, 233-256, liii-lvi. Original printed wrapper (staples rusted, upper part of spine darkened). Seller Inventory # ABE-1595435468996

Bibliographic Details

Title: Artificial Production of Fast Protons, p. ...

Publisher: London: Macmillan

Publication Date: 1932

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Near Fine

Edition: 1st Edition