Radioactive Transformations

Rutherford Ernest, Wilczek Frank

Originally published over one hundred years ago, "Radioactive Transformations" describes Ernest Rutherford's Nobel Prize-winning research on radioactive matter. Rutherford outlines the scientific investigations that led to and coincided with Rutherford's own research – including the work of Wilhem Rontgen, J. J. Thomson, and Marie Curie – and explains in detail the experiments that provided a glimpse at special relativity, quantum mechanics, and other concepts that would shape twentieth-century physics. This new edition of Rutherford's classic work features a comprehensive introduction by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek that provides historical context and also explains how Rutherford's early research led to a better understanding of topics as diverse as the age of our planet, the workings of the atom's nucleus, and the fusion in stars.

About the Author

Ernest Rutherford received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for his research into the "disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".

Frank Wilczek is the Herman Feshback Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of quantum chromodynamics.

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