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vi, 495, xcviii pp. With plates, text illustrations. (4to) half cloth and marbled boards, gilt ruled spine, spine label lettered in gilt.

First appearance of papers concerning the invention of the Geiger counter. This device made possible the famous alpha-particle scattering experiment carried out by Geiger and Marsden which led Rutherford to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. “In 1907 Rutherford was translated to the chair of physics in the University of Manchester. Here he found a young graduate of Erlangen, Hans Geiger, with whom he devised [in the present paper] an electrical method of counting the alpha-particles directly, the Geiger counter as it has since been generally called... This counting of atoms one by one was a great achievement” (Whittaker, History of Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol. I, p. 7).