CURIE, Marie. Traité de la Radioactivité.
Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1910.
Quarto (254 x 167 mm). 2 volumes. Vol. I: XIII-426 pp., (1) f.; Vol. II: (2) ff., 541 pp., (9) ff.
Sewn, unopened, chemise and slipcase.
An exceedingly rare first edition, here accompanied by a striking original radiograph of a hand, dated 31 December 1918.
A scientific monument of the early 20th century, the work gathers the state of Marie Curie's research on radioactive substances and their radiation. Published the year before her Nobel Prize in Chemistry, it is one of the great founding texts of modern physics and chemistry.
Accompanying the copy is a striking original radiograph of a hand, bearing in the lower right corner the manuscript date of 31 December 1918 and the stamp of Doctor Lucien Mallet. The verso carries several manuscript notes: the injured man is named Borot and was wounded on 7 December 1918.
A pupil of Antoine Béclère, Lucien Mallet (1885–1981) was one of the first French radiologists and radiotherapists. In 1926 he described a luminous emission produced by substances subjected to gamma radiation, a phenomenon later associated with the Cherenkov effect.
