Preuves expérimentales de l'existence du neutron. Offprint from: Journal de Physique et la Radium, Vol. 4, January 1933

Descripción

First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 21-33). On 18 January 1932, Curie and Joliot presented a paper to the Académie des Sciences, in which they announced their recent observation of the projection of hydrogen nuclei from paraffin by the polonium-beryllium penetrating radiation. Although they acknowledged the great difficulty involved in interpreting the phenomena of the penetrating radiation, they took advantage of their prerogative as the leaders in the field (and their unique polonium source) to suggest a tentative explanation for their results: 'we suppose that [these] photons can transmit part of their energy to protons by a process analogous to the emission of electrons projected by the Compton effect'. Here, Joliot and Curie had missed the discovery of the neutron by failing to consider any other possibility for the nature of the Bothe-Becker radiation than that it was composed of high-energy gamma-rays (as Bothe had assumed). James Chadwick in Cambridge recognised the true nature of the Bothe-Becker radiation and won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the neutron. Joliot nevertheless reported Chadwick's work quite favourably, and he and Irene Curie performed experiments to verify Chadwick's conclusion (reported in the offered paper). They noted, in particular, that the penetration of the neutrons through lead barriers increased with increasing energy of the incident alpha-rays. Large 8vo, pp. pp. [1-3], 4-15, [1, blank], with two photographic plates. Original printed wrappers. N° de ref. del artículo ABE-1677588603045

Contactar al vendedor

Denunciar este artículo

Detalles bibliográficos