From Nuclear Transmutation to Nuclear Fission, 1932#150;1939
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Author(s): R. Dahl
Publisher: Institute of Physics
ISBN: 0750308656
Format: hardback
304pp
Price: £55.00, $75.00
Review Date: 06 September 2002
Review: This book describes the early history of nuclear physics, when four laboratory teams raced to achieve the transmutation of atomic nuclei with artificially accelerated nuclear projectiles (protons) in high-voltage discharge tubes or vacuum chambers. The race was won by Rutherford at the Cavendish laboratory in 1932, but the author gives the details of the competing US particle accelerators developed in Washington and California. Subsequent developments in nuclear science are also included, culminating in the discovery of fission and its aftermath.