HESS, Vicktor. “Uber Beobachtungen der durchdringenden Strahlung bei sieben Freiballonfahrten”, in Physikalische Zeitschrift, volume 13, 1912, pp 1084-1091, offered in the full volume. This is the work for which Hess would (much) later receive his shared Nobel in physics in 1936. Cloth-backed marbled boards with cloth-tipped corners. Institutional copy with a bookplate and a few rubber stamps on title page, otherwise a fine copy. $450
- “Hess took up the problem stated by Wulf in 1911. He first verified the rate of absorption of gamma rays and then, with the help of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Aeroclub, made ten difficult and daring balloon ascensions, collecting data with improved instrumentation. He reached a height of 5,350 meters, with striking results. He was able to establish that to a height of approximately 150 meters above sea level, radiation decreased according to known laws, while at greater heights radiation increased steadily, following approximately the same laws. He found radiation at 5,000 meters to be several times greater than that at sea level, and also that radiation at all levels was the same night or day, and therefore not the result of the direct rays of the sun. He was thus able to conclude that the radiation he recorded at high altitudes entered the atmosphere from above and was, in fact, of cosmic origin. His results were verified in an extension of his experiments made by W. Kohlhörster in1913—Kohlhörster reached a height of 9,300 meters, and recorded radiation of twelve times that at sea level—but were not acknowledged by other physicists for a number of years. (“Cosmic rays” were so named by R. A. Millikan in 1925.) In 1913 Hess himself equipped the meteorological station on Hoch Obir (2,141 meters) in Carinthia to accommodate further studies of cosmic radiation; these experiments, however, were brought to a halt by World War I. “--"Hess, Victor Franz (Francis)." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 6. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 354-356.
The last of the ascensions was made on August 7, 1912, with the results published in this issue of the PZ.
- “The results of these observations seem best explained by a radiation of great penetrating power entering the atmosphere from above..' This was the beginning of cosmic-ray astronomy”-- Harwitt, Cosmic Discovery, pg 14.
Also contained in this volume:
- Laue, Max. “Einande gegen die Relativitatstheorie und ihre Widerlegung";
- Meitner, Lisa. "Uber das Zerfallsschema des aktiven Niederschlags des Thoriums”;
- and numerous others.
Comments