Lot 21: BECQUEREL, HENRI. 1852-1908. "Recherches sur une propriété nouvelle de la matière: activité radiante spontanée ou radioactivité de la matière." [Offprint from:] Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences de l'Institute de France, 46. Paris:

BECQUEREL, HENRI. 1852-1908.
"Recherches sur une propriété nouvelle de la matière: activité radiante spontanée ou radioactivité de la matière." [Offprint from:] Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences de l'Institute de France, 46. Paris: Firmin-Didot & Cie., 1903. 4to (281 x 229 mm). Original blue wrappers. 13 plates from photographs. Creasing to spine, a few tears to paper of spine, chip to bottom corner of one plate. Housed in custom slipcase.FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of Becquerel's seminal publication on radioactivity. This work constitutes a chronological narrative of his findings starting in 1896, the year he discovered spontaneous radioactivity, up until 1903, the year he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie. "Becquerel continued to work on the subject until 1903 [when] ... he published the above massive volume of some 360 pages, which is his definitive work, containing a chronological narrative of his investigations, his mature conclusions and a bibliography of 214 treatises on radio-activity" (PMM 393). Dibner 163. Norman 158.