Item #602 Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtabsorption. WITH: Das Prinzip von der Erhaltung der Schwerpunktsbewgung und die Tragheit der Energie. Albert Einstein.

Zur Theorie der Lichterzeugung und Lichtabsorption. WITH: Das Prinzip von der Erhaltung der Schwerpunktsbewgung und die Tragheit der Energie

FIRST EDITION of two important Einstein papers, including one of the two papers on his Noble Prize winning work on the photoelectric effect.

On the Theory of Light Production and Light Absorption: A continuation and development of Einstein’s revolutionary first paper in 1905 on the photoelectric effect (“On a Heuristic Point of View about the Creation and Conversion of Light”).

“In a companion paper [to “On a Heuristic Point...”], published in 1906, Einstein exposed appeal to the quantum as fundamentally counter to the ethos of classical physics: ‘the theoretical bases on which Planck’s radiation theory rests are different from those of Maxwell’s theory’. Planck had not initially intended to quantify light-radiation itself, but Einstein demonstrated that his own ‘light-quantum hypothesis’ was implicit in Planck’s earlier work. In viewing radiation not as a continuous wave, but as composed of small packets of energy (later called photons), Einstein was again shaking the foundations of classical physics” (Honner, The Description of Nature, 31). Particle Physics: One Hundred Years of Discoveries: “Corpuscular-wave dualism for photons. Explanation of the photoelectric effect using the quantum hypothesis of Planck. Nobel prize to A. Einstein awarded in 1921 ‘for services to Theoretical Physics, and especially of he law of the photoelectric effect.’” Weil *12.

The Principle of Conservation of Motion of the Center of Gravity and the Inertia of Energy: Einstein’s further development of E=mc2. Einstein boldly uses his relationship to insist that the conservation of mass is a special case of the conservation of energy and broadens the law to include not only mechanical, but electromagnetic processes as well. Weil 13.

IN: Annalen der Physik, Vol. 20, pp. 199-206; 627-633. Leipzig: Barth, 1906. Octavo, modern full green morocco. Rippling to the first few leaves of volume (not affecting Einstein papers). Provenance: with library stamp on series title from the prestigious Gmelin Institute (after 1996, part of the Max Planck Institute). Very handsomely bound.

Price: $1,450 .

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