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Extraordinarily rare
first edition in English of |
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"The object of the
present work is the publication of researches which I have been carrying
on for more than four years on radio-active bodies. I began these
researches by a study of the phosphorescence of uranium, discovered by
M. Becquerel. The results to which I was led by this work promised to
afford so interesting a field that M. Curie put aside the work on which
he was engaged, and joined me, our object being the extraction of new
radioactive substances and the further study of their properties.
From the chemical point of view, one point is definitely established:-i.e., the existence of a new element, strongly radio-active, viz., radium. The preparation of the pure chloride of radium and the determination of the atomic weight of radium form the chief part of my own work. Whilst this work adds to the elements actually known with certainty a new element with very curious properties, a new method of chemical research is at the same time established and justified. This method, based on the consideration of radio-activity as an atomic property of matter, is just that which enabled M. Curie and myself to discover the existence of radium." -Marie Curie, Radio-Active Substances |
| Curie, Marie Sklodowska.
"Radio-Active Substances." In: The Chemical News, Vol. 88, no.
2282 - Vol. 88, no. 2297. London: Edwin John Davey, 1903. Quarto,
original wrappers. The entire year of The Chemical News offered, from 2
January 1903 - 24 December 1903 (Vol. 87, no. 87. Complete in 54 issues.
In custom cloth box.
Extraordinarily rare first edition in English of Marie Curie's famous doctoral thesis, her most significant publication and one of the most important papers in the field of radioactivity. The only translation of the original edition. Marie Curie's landmark doctoral thesis documents the results of her extremely fertile research into the phenomenon of radioactivity during the years 1897 to 1903. During this period Curie "made the first measurement of radioactive radiation, demonstrated the radioactive properties of thorium, discovered polonium and radium, described the atomic nature of radioactivity, prepared pure radium chloride, determined the atomic weight of radium, observed induced radioactivity... and developed the chemical aspects of radioactivity" (Norman 543). Curie shared (with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel) the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of radioactivity and won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of radium and polonium. Curie's work is included in 15 consecutive issues of The Chemical News. The present set includes all 54 issues (including two index volumes) from the year 1903 and includes important papers by Ernest Rutherford, Pierre Curie, William Ramsay, William Crookes, Frederick Soddy, Freidrich Giesel, Carl Runge, Arthur Schuster, and many others. PMM (Printing and the Mind of Man) 394 (for the original French edition). In remarkable condition in original wrappers: only a few marginal repairs to the first volume, occasional light chipping, otherwise fine. Of extraordinary rarity: No copies found in American Book Prices Current for at least the past 25 years and OCLC locates only two copies of the Curie article in original parts in institutions. Most rare and important. |
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