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Lot 145
SPECTROSCOPY. PASCHEN, FRIEDRICH. 1865-1947. 6 Autograph Letters Signed ("F. Paschen"), in German, 13 pp recto and verso,
4 June 2014, 13:00 EDT
New YorkUS$2,000 - US$3,000
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SPECTROSCOPY.
PASCHEN, FRIEDRICH. 1865-1947. 6 Autograph Letters Signed ("F. Paschen"), in German, 13 pp recto and verso, 4to, 15 January, 1932 to 13 June, 1935, Charlottenburg and Berlin, to physicist Samuel Goudsmit (1902-78), discussing his ongoing investigation in spectroscopy, creased where previously folded, with minor soiling and wear along creases, one with repairs at folds. Complete transcriptions and translations into English available for all letters upon request.
Provenance: Jeremy Norman.
SIX LETTERS OF ONLY 189 TO SURVIVE THE BOMBING RAID THAT DESTROYED PASCHEN'S SCIENTIFIC ARCHIVES, five of which are previously unknown. Excellent series of very technical scientific letters to Goudsmit discussing his ongoing investigations in spectroscopy, particularly problems of hyperfine structure and the Zeeman effect. Described by one biographer as "probably the greatest experimental spectroscopist of his time" (quoted in DSB), Paschen, in the words of Niels Bohr, had a "happy intuition" that led him always to "pursue experimentally those problems the investigation of which proved to be of decisive significance for the extension of general theoretical conceptions" (quoted in DSB). Paschen's experimental work in spectroscopy provided some of the most revealing clues to atomic structure; it was particularly useful to Arnold Sommerfeld, whose modifications of Bohr's theory of atomic structure had impressed Paschen so much that he devoted six months to confirming the theory's predictions. During his tenure as professor of physics at the University of Tübingen (1901-24), Paschen made Tübingen into Germany's most important center of atomic spectroscopy. In 1924 he succeeded Nernst as president of the Physikalische-Technische Reichsanstalt, the highest post to which a German experimental physicist could aspire; on May 1, 1933, after the Nazi's seizure of power in Germany, he was forced to retire in favor of the pro-Nazi physicist Johannes Stark. Despite this setback, Paschen was able to continue his laboratory research for a few years afterward—although at the cost of considerable difficulty and personal humiliation, some of which is hinted at in the letters offered here.
These six letters from Paschen to Goudsmit are almost exclusively concerned with the scientific investigations performed by the two men during the years 1932-1935; they exemplify the interplay between theoretical and experimental physics so characteristic of Paschen's career. This is particularly apparent in the last four letters (August 22, 1933 to June 13, 1935), in which Paschen provided Goudsmit with detailed information on the results of his latest researches.
According to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, all of Paschen's scientific manuscripts perished in November 1943 when his house was destroyed in a bombing raid; thus his letters to scientific colleagues such as Goudsmit represent his only surviving unpublished work in physics. The DSB gives an inventory of 184 known letters by Paschen to other physicists, taken from Kuhn's Sources for the History of Quantum Physics and the catalogues of the Niels Bohr Institute and the American Institute of Physics; of these 184 letters, only one to Goudsmit (the Jan. 15, 1932 letter included in the present collection) is cited. The collection of letters we are offering here, replete with formulae and scientific data, thus marks an important and valuable addition to the Paschen canon.
Provenance: Jeremy Norman.
SIX LETTERS OF ONLY 189 TO SURVIVE THE BOMBING RAID THAT DESTROYED PASCHEN'S SCIENTIFIC ARCHIVES, five of which are previously unknown. Excellent series of very technical scientific letters to Goudsmit discussing his ongoing investigations in spectroscopy, particularly problems of hyperfine structure and the Zeeman effect. Described by one biographer as "probably the greatest experimental spectroscopist of his time" (quoted in DSB), Paschen, in the words of Niels Bohr, had a "happy intuition" that led him always to "pursue experimentally those problems the investigation of which proved to be of decisive significance for the extension of general theoretical conceptions" (quoted in DSB). Paschen's experimental work in spectroscopy provided some of the most revealing clues to atomic structure; it was particularly useful to Arnold Sommerfeld, whose modifications of Bohr's theory of atomic structure had impressed Paschen so much that he devoted six months to confirming the theory's predictions. During his tenure as professor of physics at the University of Tübingen (1901-24), Paschen made Tübingen into Germany's most important center of atomic spectroscopy. In 1924 he succeeded Nernst as president of the Physikalische-Technische Reichsanstalt, the highest post to which a German experimental physicist could aspire; on May 1, 1933, after the Nazi's seizure of power in Germany, he was forced to retire in favor of the pro-Nazi physicist Johannes Stark. Despite this setback, Paschen was able to continue his laboratory research for a few years afterward—although at the cost of considerable difficulty and personal humiliation, some of which is hinted at in the letters offered here.
These six letters from Paschen to Goudsmit are almost exclusively concerned with the scientific investigations performed by the two men during the years 1932-1935; they exemplify the interplay between theoretical and experimental physics so characteristic of Paschen's career. This is particularly apparent in the last four letters (August 22, 1933 to June 13, 1935), in which Paschen provided Goudsmit with detailed information on the results of his latest researches.
According to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, all of Paschen's scientific manuscripts perished in November 1943 when his house was destroyed in a bombing raid; thus his letters to scientific colleagues such as Goudsmit represent his only surviving unpublished work in physics. The DSB gives an inventory of 184 known letters by Paschen to other physicists, taken from Kuhn's Sources for the History of Quantum Physics and the catalogues of the Niels Bohr Institute and the American Institute of Physics; of these 184 letters, only one to Goudsmit (the Jan. 15, 1932 letter included in the present collection) is cited. The collection of letters we are offering here, replete with formulae and scientific data, thus marks an important and valuable addition to the Paschen canon.