ANDRADE, Edward Neville da Costa (his copy)

The Structure of the Atom

(London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd), 1923

THE AUTHOR'S WORKING COPY, INTERLEAVED, WITH HUNDREDS OF ANNOTATIONS, INSERTS AND AN ORIGINAL 'ATOM TRACK' PHOTOGRAPH

First edition [offered with:] an interleaved and marked-up second volume of the 3rd edition [with:] a proofing copy of the 3rd edition.

3 vols, 8vo, hardback; various paginations, two vols interleaved.

An extensive and meticulous archive of developments in physics in the 1920s, contained in two editions of Andrade’s standard work on the atom.

The first edition of The Structure of the Atom offered here gives an extraordinary view of this tumultuous scientific decade. The book was published in 1923, at a time when, as Andrade put it in a contemporary paper in Nature, ‘The theory of atomic structure has [...] reached a stage of sufficient success and stability for it to be possible to describe many of its features in a simple manner’.

By the time of the massively revised 3rd edition (1927) new developments in the study of radiation and changes in quantum theory – including the Compton Effect, Pauli’s Exclusion Principle, and the wave-particle duality equations of De Broglie and Schrodinger – caused Andrade to revise the second half of his book entirely.

Andrade has used his interleaved copy of the book to record many of the developments through the middle of the 1920s – these appearing ‘in real time’ as they were published, with references to many of the most famous names in physics at the time, together with numerous loose sheets with annotations, and extensive marginal corrections to the text.

Amongst the many delightful details of this volume are the manuscript chapter epigraphs, not in fact used in later editions, with quotations from Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, and Paradise Lost.

Towards the end of the volume the weight of new information reaches its limit, with extensive annotations and loose sheets overwhelming the original material, much of which is struck through. To give just one example. F.W. Aston’s work on isotopes, published around the time the book was issued, is summarised on three long sheets of paper loosely inserted, complete with ms tables and diagrams.

Completing this group are: the second volume only of Andrade’s interleaved copy of the 3rd edition, with some notes and inserts; another copy of the 3rd edition, complete in one volume, marked up with corrections and notes for the indexer (date stamped to November 1926 and evidently used in the production of the 3rd edition).

(The Mechanism of Nature, shown in the picture, is also Andrade's working copy for the revision edition; this is available separately – please contact us for further details.)

Good condition: 1923 volume rebound; some loose sheets worn.