Radio-Activity. WITH: Radiations from Radioactive Substances
“I remember going to see [Rutherford] in the old Maxwell Wing of the laboratory and finding him sitting, as he so often did, on a stool. He received me very kindly, and gave me authority to devote such time as I could spare from mathematics to work in the advanced practical [physics] class… looking at me with those penetrating eyes, he promised to take me into the Cavendish if I got a ‘first’.”
– John Cockcroft, in Rutherford: By Those Who Knew Him (1954), p. 22
FIRST EDITIONS OF RUTHERFORD’S SEMINAL TEXTS ON RADIOACTIVITY; FROM THE WORKING LIBRARY OF JOHN COCKCROFT.
Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work on radioactivity, work introduced to the world in the present first editions of Radio-Activity (1904) and Radiations from Radioactive Substances (1930). It was this research that was later extended by his research assistant John Cockcroft, who himself received the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for artificially accelerating atomic particles and splitting the atom.
When Winston Churchill, having visited MIT in the US after stepping down from the political arena, envisaged a new science-centric research centre for the UK, one individual stood out as an obvious choice to lead the new college in its formative years. Sir John Cockcroft was appointed by the Crown as the first Master of Churchill College, Cambridge – a new constituent of the university where he had worked under Rutherford and where he later achieved the first artificial disintegration of an atomic nucleus.
An honour marking the fourth decade since he first joined Rutherford at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, Cockcroft served as Master from 1959 until his death in 1967. In this time, he welcomed the College’s first cohorts of undergraduate students and graduate researchers, appointed the its firsts Fellows and oversaw the construction of its initial facilities – making the College his home in his later years, where he would die after eight years in the role. In addition to his research papers, lab books and correspondences, Cockcroft’s working library was presented to the College library after his death.
Included in the bequest were Cockcroft’s first editions of Rutherford’s seminal 1904 textbook Radio-Activity, which filled the great vacuum formed following Rutherford’s work on alpha particles in the preceding decades, and Radiations from Radioactive Substances, the “final form” of Rutherford’s textbook which became “the principal source for all aspiring nuclear physicists” across the world – not least Fermi, Einstein and a generation of chemists and physicists in America (Mackintosh, “The Third Man: Charles Drummond Ellis, 1895–1980”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 49 (1995), p. 277).
The present editions bear Cockcroft’s memorial bookplate and the latter is signed by Cockcroft on the front free endpaper. They were de-accessioned and sold by Churchill College in 2015. Both are in excellent condition and pay tribute to the formative relationship between two of the twentieth century’s most accomplished scientists, Rutherford and Cockcroft.
RUTHERFORD, ERNEST. Radio-Activity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904. First edition. Octavo, with half-tone plate and text line illustrations, pp. [xii], 399, [1]. Original publisher’s dark green diced cloth, gilt-lettered front cover and spine. Cockcroft’s memorial bookplate on front pastedown, “This book was bequeathed to | Churchill College, Cambridge | by its first Master | SIR JOHN | COCKCROFT |O.M. K.C.B. C.B.E. F.R.S. | 27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967”.
With general rubbing and wear to cloth, small inkblot to upper board, remnants of residue on front free endpaper, otherwise text fine.
with
RUTHERFORD, ERNEST, James Chadwick, and C.D. Ellis. Radiations from Radioactive Substances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930. First edition. Octavo, pp. [xii], 588, 8vo. Original cloth. Dibner, Heralds of Science 51; Grolier/Horblit 51; Norman 1871. John Cockcroft’s memorial bookplate on front pastedown, “This book was bequeathed to | Churchill College, Cambridge | by its first Master | SIR JOHN | COCKCROFT |O.M. K.C.B. C.B.E. F.R.S. | 27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967”. Inscribed “J.D. Cockcroft” on front free endpaper. With general rubbing and wear to cloth, small inkblot to upper board, remnants of residue on front free endpaper, otherwise text fine.
Price: $4,900 .