Women and Science
(Brenner, Sydney) Douarin, Nicole le | Dans le Secret des Êtres Vivants
£250.00
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First edition, first impression, paperback issue. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner on the half title, “It has been great to have the chance to know you. Thanks to Gulbenkian! With my admiration and my sincére amitié, these pages about my life in science. Paris, le 26 Juillet 2012, Nicole le Douarin”. Gulbenkian probably refers to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which may have held a conference or other event at which Douarin and Brenner met.
Recipient Sydney Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.
Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).
Author Nicole le Douarin (1930 - ) is a leader in the field of developmental biology. She has designed important techniques for studying differentiation in embryos, most importantly the creation of chimeras in which cells from two different species can be individually tracked as they develop into organ systems. Crucially, she used this technique to elucidate the early development of the nervous and immune systems. Douarin has recieved numerous accolades for her work. “In 1988 she was only the third woman in 500 years to be admitted as a member of the College de France. In 1989 she was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Science and in 1990 as a fellow of the Royal Society. She also received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 1990 and in 1991 she became an officer of the Légion d’Honneur. In 1993 she received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. She is an honorary fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2002) and was the first recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize for women in science and biology (2004)” (The Embryo Project Encyclopedia).
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...Itinéraire d'une Biologiste. Péreface de Mona Ozouf et Michelle Perrot.
Paris: Robert Laffont, 2012.
Pefect bound. Original white wrappers printed in blue and black. With the publisher’s wraparound band. Minor bump to head of spine. An excellent, fresh copy.
Bacon, Gertrude | Memories of Land and Sky
£350.00
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First edition of the memoirs of the first Englishwoman to fly. Inscribed by the author, using her married name, on the title page, “(Gertrude Foggitt) – Sept. 1936”.
Gertrude Bacon (1874-1949) was the daughter of the scientist and balloonist Rev. John Maczenzie Bacon, and she accompanied him on most of his expeditions. "Bacon became fascinated by flying and as a journalist reported on the various airships and planes being built." In August 1904 she became the first woman to fly in an airship, being a passenger in the near-disastrous first flight of an 84-foot-long ship designed by Stanley Spencer. "From 22 to 29 August, 1909, the world's first aviation meeting was held at Rheims, France. Bacon was determined to go for a ride in one of the new machines. On the last day she was taken up in a Farman plane, squeezed between the radiator and the pilot. She described the takeoff: 'The motion was wonderfully smooth - smoother yet - and then - ! Suddenly there had come into it a new indescribable quality - a lift - a lightness - a life!' Thus she became the first Englishwoman to fly" (International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, p. 15). Bacon flew on several other occasions, and became the first ever hydroplane passenger at Lake Windermere in 1912. Bacon became Gertrude Foggitt in 1929, when she married fellow botanist and chemist Thomas Jackson Foggitt.
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...With Twenty-Four Illustrations. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1928.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in blind. 8-page publisher’s ads at rear. Portrait frontispiece and 15 plates from black and white photographs. Spine cocked, cloth a little rubbed at the extremities, two shallow dents in the upper board, lower corner bumped, some spotting to the contents, particularly the early leaves, and edges of the text block. Very good condition.
Bonnevie, Kristine | "Chromosomenstudien III
£250.00
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Offprint, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the upper wrapper, “Schrader, with kind regards of the author”.
Cell biologist Kristine Bonnevie (1872-1949) was Norway’s first female professor and the first woman member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. She studied with chromosome researcher Theodor Boveri in Germany, and was awarded a PhD in 1906 for her study of sex cells. “The problem of chromosome halving in the sex cells was not well understood at the time, and her work challenged the classic work of the Norwegian cytologists Alette and Kristian Emil Schreiner. In response to criticism by the Schreiners about her chromosomal work, Bonnevie went to Columbia University where she worked on sex chromosomes in the sea snake, under E. B. Wilson, verifying her earlier work... In 1908, she extended her work to non-dividing chromosomes in related organisms. She continued work on mitosis even after she gave up other work in cytology (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science).” On Bonnevie’s return to Norway she became a professor of zoology at the University of Oslo (then Christiana) and did significant work on human genetic diseases and fingerprint patterns. “By 1949, almost every Norwegian cytologist had been trained by her” (BDWS). Bonnevie received a number of awards for her social and political work, including being made St. Olaf knight, First Class, for organising deliveries of food to the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War.
The subject of this paper is the maturation of chromatin in the chromosomes of the common onion, chromatin being the cellular material that packages the usually-loose DNA into dense chromosomes in preparation for cell division. The recipient is uncertain, but may have been the prominent chromosome researcher Franz Schrader (1891-1962) or his wife, Sally, also a cytologist in her own right (1895-1984). Franz Schrader was a generation younger than Bonnevie, but it’s possible that this offprint was sent to him sometime after publication, perhaps as part of correspondence between the two scientists. Schrader was certainly well aware of Bonnevie’s work, and in 1935 cited her in the first paragraph of his paper “Notes on the Mitotic Behaviour of Long Chromosomes” in the journal Cytologia.
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...Chromatinreifung in Allium cepa. Mit 4 Tafeln." Offprint from The Archiv for Zellforschung volume 6, number 2.
Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1911.
Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 4 plates of which 1 is folding and the others are double-page. Ownership signature “Ric” and short note on the upper wrapper. Wrappers a little toned at the extremities, lightly rubbed, lower corner bumped, contents faintly toned. A very good copy.
Bowman, Martie | Calendar for 1936 depicting pilot Martie Bowman in her WACO INF biplane.
£450.00
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A remarkable piece of early aviation ephemera, this calendar was produced as a Christmas greeting by the early female aviator Marguerite (Martie) Bowman (1901-1985) and her husband Leslie, also a pilot. It depicts Bowman flying in her WACO INF biplane, registration number NC625Y, in formation with two others, and includes portraits of Bowman, her husband, and their daughter Larnie Bowman Allen. We have learned from one of the Bowmans’ grandchildren that Larnie joined the family profession, becoming a wing-walker at eight and soloing at twelve.
The Bowmans established an aviation business together and, during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Martie Bowman ferried planes from factories and regularly participated in air races. She competed in the 1930 Women’s Dixie Air Derby from Washington D. C. to Chicago, and won the Women’s International Air Derby of 1934 and the two-day women’s championship Shell Trophy Cup at Long Beach, California. In her biography of fellow pilot Phoebie Omlie, Janann Sherman recounts that during the Dixie Derby Bowman selflessly assisted Omlie, who had an injury, by waking up each hour during the night to apply medicated drops to her eyes (Sherman, Walking on Air, p. 65).
The Bowman’s papers are held at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and as of 2001 two of Martie Bowman’s planes were still registered as flight-worthy with the FAA.
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[Olympia, WA], 1935.
Silver gelatin composite photograph (250 x 200 mm) with small tear-off monthly calendar for 1936. Inscribed “Merry Christmas, The Bowmans”. A few minor nicks and spots at the edges. Excellent, unused condition.
Lebour, Marie V. | The Planktonic Diatoms of the Northern Seas
£250.00
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First edition, first impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to her sister on the front free endpaper, “To dear Yvonne, From M. V. L.” (see Lebour’s obituary in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, volume 52, p. 778).
Diatoms, a type of phytoplankton, are one of the earth’s keystone species. They are microscopic algae with silica shells that live in both freshwater and marine environments, and produce an amount of oxygen comparable to that of the all terrestrial rainforests combined. They are a primary food source for many other organisms, and accumulations of their shells in sediments record changes in the oceans and climate. Much was learned about phytoplankton during the early twentieth century, and marine biologist Marie Lebour (1876-1971) became one of the leading experts through her work at the Plymouth Marine Biological Laboratory. She “published two classical papers on this topic in 1917. Her subsequent work on taxonomy of plankton species resulted in her first book, Dinoflagellates of the Northern Seas, and in a subsequent volume in 1930 [the present work]. She identified no fewer than twenty-eight new species” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science). Lebour also studied molluscs and their parasites, euphausiid larvae, and the eggs and larvae of fish. She was also a talented draftsperson, and “her detailed and artistic sketches enhanced her publications” (Ogilvie).
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...With Four Plates. London: printed for the Ray Society, sold by Dulau & Co., Ltd., 1930.
Octavo. Original blue cloth elaborately blocked in blind, titles to spine and floral roundel to upper board gilt, yellow coated endpapers, top edge gilt. Ray Society half title with portrait vignette, 4 plates, engravings throughout the text. 16 page Ray Society membership and recent publications lists dated January 1930 at rear. Cloth just a little rubbed at the extremities, spine and edges of the boards tanned, free endpapers partially tanned. An excellent copy.
Maryańska, Teresa & Halszka Osmólska | Aspects of Hadrosaurian Cranial Anatomy
£50.00
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A rare, inscribed offprint by Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), “one of the most productive dinosaur paleontologists of her generation” and “a giant” in the field (Dodson, ”Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving Memory of Halszka Osmólska”, American Paleontologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2008). Inscribed by the author on the upper cover using an abbreviated form of her signature, “from HOsm...”. This article reports on the authors’ observations of hadrosaur cranial structures, based on fossils collected from the Upper Cretaceous Nemegt Formation by the Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions as well as examination of the hadrosaurs in the collections of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Osmólska graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1955, and spent most of her career at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as director between 1984 and 1989 and also as editor of the Institute’s journal, Acta Palaeontologica.
Osmólska was a member of the important Polish-Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi, which were led by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska between 1965 and 1971 and resulted in the excavation of thirty-five tons of fossils. These excavations “added greatly to our understanding of the diversity of dinosaurs. The material collected in those few years provided material for major portions of the careers of five or six Polish scientists” and “the scientific descriptions of dinosaurs that soon began to flow from the expeditions were almost exclusively written by Polish women, women who up to then had published on Paleozoic invertebrates” (Dodson). Osmólska was one of these specialists, and much of her work on the Mongolian fossils was carried out in partnership with another prominent palaeontologist, Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019), the lead author of this piece.
Osmólska and Maryańska’s first major publication resulting from the Gobi expeditions was the discovery of Deinocheirus mirificus (’unusual horrible hand’), “a fossil collected during the 1965 field season at Altan Ula III in the Nemegt Basin. The find consisted of two nearly complete articulated forelimbs of a theropod of unprecedented size. The forelimbs were 2.4 meters (almost 8 feet) long. The claws on the three-fingered hand measured 323 mm in length (nearly 13 inches). A possible ornithomimosaur, the animal remains enigmatic decades later, pending further discoveries” (Dodson).
Over the course of her career, Osmólska “was responsible for the description of 15 genera of dinosaurs. She was solo author of four of these, and first author of two more. The remarkable team of Maryańska and Osmólska was responsible for naming eight genera. She was honored in the names of a basal archosaur, Osmolskina czatkowicensis (Borsuk-Białynicka & Evans, 2003) and two dinosaurs: the oviraptorosaur Citipati osmolskae (Clark et al., 2001), and most recently (June 2008) Velociraptor osmolskae (Godefroit et al., 2008). She was elected to honorary life membership in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2003” (Dodson). Osmólska was also an editor of the The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990.
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...[offprint from] Lethaia, Volume 12, pp. 265-273. Oslo: Lethaia, 1979.
10-page offprint, wire-stitched. Illustrations within the text. A little minor creasing. Excellent condition.
Osmólska, Halszka | Nasal Salt Gland in Dinosaurs
£50.00
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A rare, inscribed offprint by Halszka Osmólska (1930-2008), “one of the most productive dinosaur paleontologists of her generation” and “a giant” in the field (Dodson, ”Polish Women in the Gobi – In Loving Memory of Halszka Osmólska”, American Paleontologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2008). Inscribed by the author on the upper cover, “with compliments of H. Osmólska". This paper discusses the purpose of nasal glands in dinosaurs, and whether they were used to excrete salt, as in some bird species.
Osmólska graduated from the University of Warsaw in 1955, and spent most of her career at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as director between 1984 and 1989 and also as editor of the Institute’s journal, Acta Palaeontologica.
Osmólska was a member of the important Polish-Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi, which were led by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska between 1965 and 1971 and resulted in the excavation of thirty-five tons of fossils. These excavations “added greatly to our understanding of the diversity of dinosaurs. The material collected in those few years provided material for major portions of the careers of five or six Polish scientists” and “the scientific descriptions of dinosaurs that soon began to flow from the expeditions were almost exclusively written by Polish women, women who up to then had published on Paleozoic invertebrates” (Dodson). Osmólska was one of these specialists, and much of her work on the Mongolian fossils was carried out in partnership with another prominent palaeontologist, Teresa Maryańska (1937-2019).
Osmólska and Maryańska’s first major publication resulting from the Gobi expeditions was the discovery of Deinocheirus mirificus (’unusual horrible hand’), “a fossil collected during the 1965 field season at Altan Ula III in the Nemegt Basin. The find consisted of two nearly complete articulated forelimbs of a theropod of unprecedented size. The forelimbs were 2.4 meters (almost 8 feet) long. The claws on the three-fingered hand measured 323 mm in length (nearly 13 inches). A possible ornithomimosaur, the animal remains enigmatic decades later, pending further discoveries” (Dodson).
Over the course of her career, Osmólska “was responsible for the description of 15 genera of dinosaurs. She was solo author of four of these, and first author of two more. The remarkable team of Maryańska and Osmólska was responsible for naming eight genera. She was honored in the names of a basal archosaur, Osmolskina czatkowicensis (Borsuk-Białynicka & Evans, 2003) and two dinosaurs: the oviraptorosaur Citipati osmolskae (Clark et al., 2001), and most recently (June 2008) Velociraptor osmolskae (Godefroit et al., 2008). She was elected to honorary life membership in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2003”. Osmólska was also an editor of the The Dinosauria, one of the most important scholarly reference works on dinosaurs, first published in 1990.
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...(Nosowe Gruczoły solne u Dinozaurów). [Offprint from] Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Volume 24, Number 2, pages 205-215. Warsaw: Zakład Paleobiologii, Polska Akademia Nauk, 1979.
11-page offprint. Original white wrappers printed in black. Skull diagrams within the text. A couple of minor creases and scratches, primarily to the lower wrapper. Excellent condition.
Peckham, George W. & Elizabeth G. On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps
£150.00
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First edition, first printing of both titles, the “Additional Observations” being a presentation copy inscribed, “Mr, Claus H. Shirum [?], compliments of the authors”.
Authors Elizabeth and George Peckham were entomologists and archnologists who together pioneered the study of jumping spiders; were early proponents of including behaviour in taxonomical analysis; and performed some of the first studies on sexual selection. Elizabeth was the first female science graduate of Vasser, one of Milwaukee’s first librarians, and a suffragist. George obtained a medical degree but chose to teach high school, and in 1880 the Peckhams introduced the first biological laboratory course in an American High school, also incorporating Darwinian concepts in their pedagogy.
Together the Peckhams described 63 genera and 366 species, and one genus, at least twenty species, and a scientific society are named in their honour. Following George’s death in 1914, Elizabeth continued their scientific work and was awarded a PhD by Cornell in 1914. On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps is now considered a scientific classic, for both its style and scholarship. -
[Bound together with] “Additional Observations on the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps” [in] Bulletin of the Wisconsin Natural History Society, vol. 1, no. 2, April 1900. Madison, WI: the state of Wisconsin, 1898.
Octavo. Contemporary library style binding of black half skiver, black cloth sides, spine gilt in compartments. 14 plates of which 2 are chromolithographs and the 12 are lithographs. Binding rubbed with wear at the corners, spine ends, and hinges, contents toned. A very good copy.
Seibert, Florence B. | Bacteria in Tumors.
£350.00
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Presentation copy of a rare offprint by the biochemist who was the first to produce purified tuberculin for use in studying and treating tuberculosis. Inscribed by the author on the upper wrapper, “Best wishes, Florence B. Seibert”. In this research paper Seibert investigates the presence of bacteria in tumors and the best methods for isolating and identifying them.
Biochemist Florence Seibert (1897-1991) was a productive and highly regarded scientist who worked in a number of areas and received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago during the early 1920s she made her first breakthrough, “a method of eliminating bacterial contamination that was known to occur during the creation of solutions meant for vaccinations and injections. Patients could experience sudden fevers or illness during or after an injection or intravenous treatment. Such afflictions, Seibert discovered, were most often caused by bacterial contamination of the distilled water used to make the solutions. She was able to eliminate this contamination using a special apparatus and procedure she created for this purpose. This would be a great boon later not only for administering drugs but also for making blood transfusions safer during surgery” (Lemelson-MIT biography).
But Seibert’s most significant work was on tuberculosis, particularly her improvements to Robert Koch’s skin test for the infection. “Koch’s method was notoriously inaccurate, for the evaporated solution used in the test contained numerous impurities. Even people with a serious case of tuberculosis sometimes failed to get a positive test. Seibert worked for ten years on methods of isolating pure tuberculin by filtration, by using a guncotton membrane of a specific thickness. The result was a creamy white powder which was the purified protein from the tuberculosis bacillus, known as PPD. Never patenting the process (which would have made her rich), she furnished the National Tuberculosis Association with a large quantity of pure tuberculin” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1173).
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...Reprinted from Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences Series II, Volume 34, No. 6, Pages 504-533. June 1972. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1972.
Octavo. 32-page offprint, wire-stitched, original white wrappers printed in black. Black and white illustrations from photomicrographs throughout. Orange ink and pencil underlining to two sentences on page 531. Yellow dampstain to the upper wrapper, lighter dampstain affecting the tail of the spine and edges of the wrappers. Minor creasing along the wrapper edges. A very good copy.
Williams, Paige | The Dinosaur Artist
£175.00
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First edition, first printing. Inscribed by the author on the title, “Paige Williams, Tucson Book festival, March 2, 2019”.
This best-selling true-crime tale centers on the remarkable 2013 legal case The United States of America v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton, in which the court decided the fate of a skeleton smuggled to the US from Mongolia by fossil dealer Eric Prokopi. Author Paige Williams, of the New Yorker, explores important questions that have surrounded the practice of palaeontology since its earliest days — who gets credit for, and benefits from, fossil discoveries, and is it ever ethical to sell fossils on the open market? An important contribution to the public’s understanding of the history and ethics of fossil hunting.
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...The Dinosaur Artist. Obsession, Betrayal and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy. New York: Hachette, 2018.
Octavo. Original white boards, titles to spine in copper. With the dust jacket. Corners very slightly bumped. An excellent copy in the fresh jacket with a little rubbing at the tips.
Wootton, Barbara | In a World I Never Made
£150.00
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Second impression. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Ted Willis, with love, B. W., December 1976” and additionally signed by the author on the title.
Wootton (1897-1988) was a prominent, left-leaning London University sociologist and economist who, in addition to her respected academic work, “served on four royal commissions and innumerable committees, was a governor of the BBC, and was a magistrate for forty years” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1400). “One of her most important academic works was published in 1959 and resulted from five years of research. In this work she reversed commonly accepted ideas about the criminal personality, juvenile delinquency, inherited behaviour trends, and problems of illegitimacy” (Ogilvie, p. 1400).
While the identify of the recipient is not known for sure, it may have been Baron Willis (1914-1992), the playwright, screenwriter, and active supporter of the Labour Party who was made a life peer just a few years after Wootton.
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...Autobiographical Reflections. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1967.
Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt on black ground, With the dust jacket. Small black mark to the cloth of the upper board, a few light spots to the edges of the text block. A very good copy in the rubbed, creased, and price-clipped jacket with a few small spots on the lower panel and an over-price sticker on the front flap.
Wright, F. E, F. H., and Helen | The Lunar Surface: Introduction
£450.00
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A rare offprint of a book chapter by the geologist and optical scientist who was considered the foremost authority on the Moon. This copy is inscribed for presentation by his daughter and co-author, science historian Helen Wright, and it comes from the library of Allan R. Sandage, the astronomer who determined the first reasonably accurate values for the Hubble Constant and the age of the universe and was considered “the greatest and most influential observational astronomer of the last half-century” (NY Times obituary, November 17, 2010). Worldcat locates only two other copies of this offprint, at the Huntington and the US Naval Observatory.
Frederick Eugene Wright (1877-1953) spent much of his career at the Carnegie Institute, where he led the Moon Project at the Mount Wilson observatory and “specialized in mineralogy, crystallography and petrology. He developed various optical instruments, chiefly for petrology, and also wrote on the manufacture of optical glass... Wright took a special interest in studying the Moon. He charted all aspects of the orb from its chemical and mineralogical content to the characteristics of its craters and seas and its temperatures. So extensive and detailed was his work that the Moon’s Wright Crater is named after him and two other astronomers” (Optical Society of America biography).
Wright’s daughter Helen began her career as an assistant at Mount Wilson, researching the history of telescopes, and she also worked at the Vassar and U. S. Naval Observatories. Among her publications were biographies of astronomers George Ellery Hale and Maria Mitchell. She has inscribed this copy “Speaking of the Moon! All the best, Helen Wright”. We strongly suspect that it was inscribed for Allan Sandage’s wife, the astronomer Mary Connelly, who had studied at Indiana University and Radcliffe, and was teaching at Mount Holyoke when they met and married.
Allan R. Sandage (1926-2010) completed his physics degree at the University of Illinois in 1948, then became a graduate student at Caltech, where he “learned the nuts and bolts of observing with big telescopes [at the Mount Wilson Observatory] from the founders of modern cosmology, Hubble; Walter Baade, who became his thesis adviser, and Milton Humason, a former mule driver who had become Hubble’s right-hand man” (NY Times). “For his doctoral thesis he studied the stars in the globular cluster Messier 3 and the RR Lyrae variable stars it contains. Refinements in the accuracy of the distances to variable stars became a recurring theme of his work, as these were the first step in determining the ladder of distances through which the true scale of the universe was measured” (Guardian obituary, December 9, 2010).
Sandage’s first major contribution was the 1961 paper, “The Ability of the 200-inch Telescope to Discriminate Between Selected World Models”, which “may well have been ‘the most influential paper ever written in any field even close to cosmology’... It was to set the direction of observational cosmology for 40 years, ruling out the Steady State and the Big Crunch and culminating in the surprise discovery in 1998 that the expansion is not slowing down at all but speeding up” (NY Times). Next, by investigating the motion of old stars in the Milky Way, he and two co-authors showed in 1962 “that that the Milky Way formed from the collapse of a primordial gas cloud probably some 10 billion years ago. That paper still forms the basis of science’s understanding of where the galaxy came from” (NY Times). He continually revised the estimate of Hubble’s constant, the speed at which the universe is expanding. “By 1975 the value, they said, was all the way down to 50, corresponding to an age of as much as 20 billion years, comfortably larger than the ages of galaxies and globular clusters. This allowed them to conclude that the universe was not slowing down enough for gravity to reverse the expansion into a Big Crunch. That was in happy agreement with astronomers who had found that there was not enough matter in the universe to generate the necessary gravity” (NY Times).
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...Reprinted from Middlehurst and Kuiper: The Moon, Meteorites, and Comets (The Solar System, Vol. IV). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.
56-page pamphlet, wire-stitched. Original buff wrappers printed in black. 3 double-sided plates, illustrations and charts within the text. Wrappers a little creased and toned, with some small marks and scratches, minor crease affecting the lower corner of the contents. Very good condition