This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/18/2024
[SEGRÈ, Emilio (1905-1989), his copies]. A group of 9 titles in 41 volumes from the library of Nobel Laureate Emilio Segrè. [V.p., v.d.]. Mainly 8vos. Various editions. Original publisher’s bindings, 5 titles in dust jackets. Some general wear, occasional soiling. Titles include Annual Review of Nuclear Science (31 volumes, volumes 1-31, inclusive, Segrè co-edited volumes 2, 7-27; this set includes a specially-bound presentation volume (volume 26) for Segrè, signed by members of the editorial committee); Experimental Nuclear Physics (volumes 1 and 2, edited by Segrè), Theoretical Nuclear Physics by Blatt and Weisskopf (signed by Segrè); Mesons and Fields by de Hoffmann, 2 volumes in dust jackets; Perspectives of Fundamental Physics edited by Schaerf (with contribution by Segrè in plain (later?) jacket - very rare); Nuclear Physics in Retrospect edited by Stuewer; Quantum Theory of Matter by Slater (in jacket); Discovering Alvarez edited by Trower (in jacket); Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure by Mayer and Jensen (in jacket). All volumes have ownership inkstamps of Segrè. 41 volumes on nuclear physics from the personal library of Nobel Prize winning physicist and one of the primary contributors to the development of the Atomic Bomb. Emilio Segrè was born in Italy and studied under the famed Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi. In 1932 he was appointed Assistant Professor under Fermi at the University of Rome. While visiting California to conduct research in the summer of 1938, Benito Mussolini’s fascist government passed laws barring Jews from holding University positions. As a result, Emilio and his wife remained indefinite refugees in California. He was offered a job at the Berkeley Radiation Lab, an area he had already been successfully researching in Italy. He thrived there. His status as an Italian refugee was not without complications. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and the subsequent United States declaration of war upon Italy, Segrè was officially an enemy alien and was cut off from any military adjacent work and from communication with his parents. By late 1942, his skill was evident, and at last Robert Oppenheimer asked Segrè to join the Manhattan Project at its Los Alamos Laboratory. Segrè shortly became the head of the laboratory’s P-5 (Radioactivity) Group, where he worked for several years. In June 1944, Segrè was summoned into Oppenheimer’s office and informed that while his father was safe, his mother had been rounded up by the Nazis in October 1943. Segrè never saw either of his parents again. His father died in Rome in October 1944. In late 1944, Segrè and his wife became naturalized citizens of the United States. In 1959 he won the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of the antiproton particle. He is remembered as one of the 20th century’s most accomplished and influential physicists.