ARE MESONS ELEMENTARY PARTICLES?

FERMI, E. [ENRICO] & C. N. YANG [CHEN NING].

Are Mesons Elementary Particles?

Lancaster, American Institute of Physics, 1949 Lex8vo. Volume 76, December 15, No. 12, 1949 of "The Physical Review", Second Series. In the original printed blue wrappers. Minor browning to extremities and slight wear to spine. Internally fine and clean. Pp. 1739-1743. [Entire issue: Pp. 1739-1934, iii-xv].

First edition of Fermi and Yang's important paper in which they discusses whether Mesons, subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark, are elementary particles.

"[The present paper] certainly touches very fundamental and deep questions. In it they develop the idea that a meson might be a tightly bound combination of a nucleon and an antinucleon. [...] This early incomplete attempt has left a trace in particle physics, and its fundamental ideas echo in later work." (Segrè, Emilio. Enrico Fermi, Physicist, 1970, p. 170).

Fermi is widely regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 20th century, Along with Oppenheimer he is frequently referred to as "the father of the atomic bomb". Yang received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for his work on parity nonconservation of weak interaction. When the present paper was written Yang functioned as Fermi's assistant.

Order-nr.: 43430