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First edition, very rare offprint, of this editorial account of a lecture on the 'compound nucleus', the application of the liquid-drop model to a calculation of nuclear excitations. It was delivered by Bohr to the Chemical and Physical Society of University College, London, on February 11, 1936. The greatest influence on Bohr's thought was Enrico Fermi's discovery in October 1934 that slow neutrons are much more efficacious in producing nuclear reactions than fast ones, contrary to what might be expected on simple energy considerations. The basic idea that Bohr presented was that an incident neutron, for example, interacts with many neutrons and protons in a target nucleus, producing an excited long-lived compound nucleus, which then decays by the emission of a proton, neutron, gamma ray, or by any process that is consistent with conservation of energy. the principal point of interest is Bohr's picture of what would happen if the energy of the incident neutron increased more and more. "If it were possible to experiment with neutrons or protons of energies above a hundred million volts, several charged or uncharged particles would eventually leave the nucleus as a result of the encounter; and with particles of energies of about a thousand million volts, we must even be prepared for the collision to lead to an explosion of the whole nucleus." Bohr's paper with the same title appeared in the same issue of Nature, pp. 344-348. Large 8vo, p. 351 (single sheet with verso blank). Seller Inventory # ABE-1699223645522
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