GAMOW'S "HYPOTHETICAL UNIVERSE COLLAPSE"

GAMOW, G.

The Evolution of the Universe.

London, Macmillan and Co, 1948. Royal8vo. Bound in contemporary full cloth. In "Nature", Vol 162, October - December. Ex-libris to front free end-paper and library stamps to title page and first page of index. Fine and clean. Pp. 680-82.

First printing of Gamow's paper in which his theory of "Hypothetical Universe Collapse" is presented.

"In 1948 he predicted that all matter in the universe is in a state of general rotation about some distant center; at the same time he began developing his ideas on the origin and frequency distribution of the chemical elements, postulating that before the "big bang" there existed a primordial state of matter, ("ylem") consisting of neutrons and their decay products, protons and electrons, mixed together in a sea of high-energy radiation-the basic ingredients necessary for the formation of deuterons and heavier, and heavier nuclei as the universe subsequently expanded. Most of the detailed theoretical calculations were carried out by R. Alpher (assisted by R. Herman), which resulted in the well-know Alpher-Bethe-Gamow letter in Physical Review of 1 April 1948-Bethe's name, in one of Gamow's more famous jokes, being added gratuitously to conform to the Greek alphabet. This work also led to the prediction of a residual blackbody radiation spectrum, the remnant from the primordial "big bang" corresponding to few degrees Kelvin. This radiation was first detected in early 1965 by A. A. Penzias and R. W. Wilson; much more definite evidence was found the following year by P. G. Roll and D. T. Wilkinson (in experiments initiated by R. R. Dicke and P. J. E. Peebles) at Princeton University. Cosmological questions concerned Gamow to the end, one of his last investigations being on the possible inconstancy of the gravitational constant and the charge or the electron." (DSB)

Order-nr.: 46937