DAVISSON, C. [CLINTON] & L. H. GERMER [LESTER].

Diffraction of Electrons by a Crystal of Nickel.

Minneapolis, The Collegiate Press, 1927. 4to. As extracted from "The Physical Review, Volume 30, Second Series, July-December, 1927". Title-page detached, with vague library stamp to top right corner. A fine and clean copy. (2), 704-740 pp.

First printing of Davisson and Germer's paper in which they present some additional discoveries not published in their groundbreaking paper "The Scattering of Electrons by a Single Crystal of Nickel" published the same year. This led directly to Davisson receiving the Nobel Prize in physics in 1937. It advanced understanding of physics at the quantum level and led to inventions such as the electron microscope.

"Davisson and Germer submitted their results to Nature in early March and their paper was published on 16 April. It contains a detailed comparison between their replcted beams and those that would be produced by illuminationg the crystal with X-rays. There were thirteen reflected beams in all, of which ten corresponded to those seen in X-ray diffraction". (Gerwin, A Century of Nature, 28 p.) They could not account for the last three wave and this was not published in their first paper.
"The remaining three peaks for which Davisson and Germer could not find any correspondence with X-ray data were later identified as being due to diffraction from atoms absorb ed on the surfaces of the target crystal." (Ibid.). This information was published in the present paper.

"Davisson's investigations on the scattering of electrons entered a new phase when, in April 1925, his taget was heavily oxidized by an accidental explosion of a liquid-air bottle. He cleaned the target by prolonged heating and then found the distribution-inangle of the secondary electrons completely changed, new showing a strong dependence on crystal direction. Prior to the accident the target had consisted of many tiny crystals, but heating converted it to several large crystals. Davisson and L. H. Germer, who had replaced Kunsman before the accident, at once began bombarding targets of single crystals. [...] When Davisson returned from England, he and Germer began a systematic research for some sort of interference phenomenon, and in January 1927 they observed electron beams resulting from diffraction by a single crystal of nickle. The results were in good agreement with de Broglie's prediction. For his confirmation of electron waves Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1937 with G. P. Thomson." (DSB, III, 597b-598a).
Davisson and Germer's confirmation of the de Broglie hypothesis if today known as the Davisson-Germer experiment.

Order-nr.: 45781