Lise Meitner's Copy

BORN, Max.

Der Aufbau der Materie. Drei Aufsätze über moderne Atomistik und Elektronentheorie.

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1920.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #003147

8vo (206 x 139 mm), [6], 81 [1] pp. Including 36 illustrations in text. Contemporar half cloth, gilt-lettered spine (extremities rubbed, corners bumped). Text littled browned, title-page browned a bit stronger at outer margins, occasional minor spotting. Provenance: Lise Meitner (her signature in pencil on title page). ----

FIRST EDITION in book form of Max Born's study of the structure of matter. In his introduction, Born writes: The three essays that make up the contents of this little book have appeared in the journal Naturwissenschaften during the last year. They treat the same object, physical atomism, from different points of view; the first gives a general overview of modern atomic theory, while the others give priority to questions which I have tried to solve myself. The similarity of the subjects implies that some repetitions occur. A fusion of the three essays into a summarized presentation seemed to me impossible, and not necessary, because the recently published book by A. Sommerfeld, Atombau und Spektrallinien (Braunschweig, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, 1919) shows the progress of the physical Atomic doctrine with great completeness and demonstrating in attractive, easy-to-handle form. The reprint of my essays should be of use to those who have no time to study the larger work of Sommerfeld. Born played an important role in the development of quantum mechanics. In 1926, together with Heisenberg and Jordan, he published the famous "three-man paper" Zur Quantenmechanik II which formed the theoretical basis for that science.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Together with Otto Hahn and Otto Robert Frisch she led the small group of scientists who first discovered nuclear fission. Meitner spent most of her scientific career in Berlin, Germany, where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. She was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany. She lost these positions in the 1930s because of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany, and in 1938, fled to Sweden, where she lived for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen. Meitner received many awards and honors late in her life, but she and Otto Frisch, did not share the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. The prize was awarded exclusively to her long-time collaborator Otto Hahn. In the 1990s, the records of the committee that decided on that prize were opened. Based on this information, several scientists and journalists have called her exclusion "unjust", and Meitner has received many posthumous honors, including naming chemical element 109 meitnerium in 1997. Despite not having been awarded the Nobel Prize, Lise Meitner was invited to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962, where she also met Max Born. Max Born nominated Lise Meitner three time for the Nobel prize in physics, in 1954, 1964 and 1965. He received the prize in 1954 together with Walther Bothe. - Visit our website for additional images and information.

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