Item #20125 The Production of High Speed Protons Without the Use of High Voltage. E. O. Lawrence, M. S. Livingston, Ernest.
The Production of High Speed Protons Without the Use of High Voltage
Testing of the First Cyclotron

The Production of High Speed Protons Without the Use of High Voltage

Minneapolis, Minnesota: The American Physical Society 1931. First Edition. [4], 593-842 pages. 7 x 10 inches. The entire issue of the Physical Review, Vol. 38 #4 (Second Series), August 15, 1931 offered. Publisher's original green printed wrappers (lightly and uniformly faded). Minor crease to the front cover near the fore-edge. Near Fine. Wraps. [20125]


The first publication of a proposed method [the cyclotron] to produce high speed protons without the use of high voltage was presented before the National Academy of Sciences in November 1930, and was published in Science in 1930 (Lawrence and Edelfson). Lawrence and Livingston (in Phys. Rev. 37, p1707, 1931) published the results of a preliminary study of the feasibility of this method.

The article offered here (in a letter to the editor on p. 834), 'The Production of High Speed Protons Without the Use of High Voltage', reports on the first successful tests and proposes next steps: "There can be little doubt that one million volt ions will be produced with intensities as great as here recorded when the present experimental tube is enlarged to make full use of the magnet. This alteration is now being carried out." Lawrence and Livingston further note that "These experiments make it evident that with quite ordinary laboratory facilities proton beams having great enough energies for nuclear studies can be readily produced with intensities far exceeding the intensities of beams of alpha-particles from radioactive sources...The importance of the production of protons of such speeds can hardly be overestimated..."

Lawrence was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics in 1939 for this work, "the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements" (nobel prize org)

"A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator ... in which charged particles accelerate outwards from the center along a spiral path. The particles are held to a spiral trajectory by a static magnetic field and accelerated by a rapidly varying (radio frequency) electric field...For several decades, cyclotrons were the best source of high-energy beams for nuclear physics experiments; several cyclotrons are still in use for this type of research. The results enable the calculation of various properties, such as the mean spacing between atoms and the creation of various collision products. Subsequent chemical and particle analysis of the target material may give insight into nuclear transmutation of the elements used in the target.

Cyclotrons can be used in particle therapy to treat cancer. Ion beams from cyclotrons can be used, as in proton therapy, to penetrate the body and kill tumors by radiation damage, while minimizing damage to healthy tissue along their path. Cyclotron beams can be used to bombard other atoms to produce short-lived positron-emitting isotopes suitable for PET imaging." (wiki)

Most often found in bound ex-library volumes, we offer here the original issue of the Physical Review as it was published.

See Ezhela, et al,, p 60, (Lawrence 1931B)

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