RUTHERFORD, Ernest.

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Radio-Activity. First edition of the first textbook on radioactivity. This copy is from Bern Dibner's Burndy Library, with its deaccessioned bookplate and the numbered "Heralds of Science" stamp. "This book includes a discussion of Rutherford's revolutionary transformation theory, developed during the period 1902-1903, which states that radioactivity is a by-product of the transmutation of one element into another" (Norman)."After the discovery of thorium emanations in 1900 new concepts of atomic structure followed from the brilliant experiments of Rutherford. A new theory of atomic disintegration was proposed, then the nuclear nature of the atom. He discovered and named alpha, beta and gamma rays emitted from radioactive salts and predicated that disintegration of some radioactive elements would generate helium. He also produced in the laboratory the first artificial transmutation of one element in to another" (Dibner).

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