I. RABI, MILLMAN, KUSCH & ZACHARIAS. The molecular beam resonance method for measuring nuclear magnetic moments: Offprint from: Physical Review, vol 55, no. 6, March 15, 1939. [With:] II. KELLOGG, RABI, RAMSEY & ZACHARIAS. The magnetic moments of the proton and the deuteron. Offprint from: ibid., vol. 56, no. 8, October 15, 1939. [With:] III. KELLOGG, RABI, RAMSEY & ZACHARIAS. An electrical quadrupole moment of the deuteron. Offprint from ibid., vol. 55, no. 3, Febriary 1, 1939. MAGNETIC RESONANCE: NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS 1944

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First edition, very rare offprints, of the discovery of magnetic resonance and its application to the measurement of the magnetic moment of the proton and deuteron (and hence of the neutron). Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898-1988) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for developing a "resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei". "The precise measurements yielded by this method made possible such subsequent applications as the atomic clock . . . and the laser, as well as the nuclear magnetic resonance imaging used in diagnostic medicine. Rabi's method provided the central technique for virtually all molecular and atomic beam experimentation" (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Rabi received his doctorate in physics from Columbia University in 1927, and afterwards travelled to Europe to study physics with Bohr, Pauli, Stern and Heisenberg. From Stern, Rabi learned the molecular-beam method, which appealed to him so much that he established his own molecular beam laboratory at Columbia in 1931, shortly after being appointed to the university's physics faculty. Working with some of the best young American physicists of the time, Rabi refined the molecular-beam apparatus and used it to measure the magnetic moment of several lithium compounds [I]. Applying the method to hydrogen, they found that the moment of a proton was 2.785 nuclear magnetons, and not 1 as predicted by the then-current theory, while that of a deuteron was 0.855 nuclear magnetons [II]. Since a deuteron is composed of a proton and a neutron with aligned spins, the neutron's magnetic moment could be inferred by subtracting the proton's magnetic moment from the deuteron's. The resulting value was not zero, and had a sign opposite to that of the proton. This led Rabi to suggested that the deuteron had an electric quadrupole moment [III]. This discovery meant that the physical shape of the deuteron was not symmetric, which provided valuable insight into the nature of the nuclear force binding nucleons. "As Hans Bethe observed, there were three key events in the formative years of nuclear physics, one of them being the discovery of the quadrupole moment of the deuteron. Without Rabi's development of the magnetic resonance method to a state of considerable precision, this discovery would not have been possible" (Magill, The Nobel Prize Winners: Physics, II, p 513). RBH lists one copy (Bonham's 2014, $1875). Three offprints, large 8vo, pp. 526-535; 728-743; 1-2. Original printed wrappers (sunned at edges). N° de ref. del artículo ABE-1681912877509

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