Complete first edition run of The Presentation of the Atoms for Peace Award, published in Cambridge, MA by Atoms for Peace Awards, Inc., 1956-1969. Nine items. Original printed wrappers, approximately 8vo, the presentation volumes embossed and silver-stamped with the obverse and reverse of the award medal; illustrated with b/w photographic portraits. Generally very good, with uniform toning to wrappers, occasional edge wear, minor creasing, and a one-inch closed tear on the 1957 issue. The complete contemporary publication sequence: the 1956 founding prospectus, followed by the presentation volumes for Niels Henrik David Bohr (1957); George Charles de Hevesy (1959); Leo Szilard, Eugene Paul Wigner, Alvin Martin Weinberg and Walter Henry Zinn (1960); Sir John Cockcroft (1961); Vladimir Iosifovich Veksler and Edwin Mattison McMillan (1963); Bertrand Leopold Goldschmidt, Wilfrid Bennett Lewis and Isidor Isaac Rabi (1967); Sigvard Eklund, Abdus Salam and Henry DeWolf Smyth (1968); and Dwight David Eisenhower, Aage Niels Bohr, Floyd Leroy Culler Jr., Henry Seymour Kaplan, Ben Roy Mottelson, Compton Alexander Rennie and Anthony Leonid Turkevich (1969). A later retrospective publication appeared in 1978 and is not part of this contemporary presentation sequence.
With significant institutional provenance: the 1956 volume retains a manuscript note recording that the group came from Bruce Leggett of MIT, executive secretary of the Atoms for Peace Awards. The MIT archival collection of the organization is substantially composed of Leggett's files and includes his correspondence with Aage Bohr, Cockcroft, de Hevesy, Eklund, Eisenhower, James Killian, Rabi, Szilard and Wigner—many of the figures represented in these volumes.
Established in 1955 by the Ford Motor Company as a memorial to Henry and Edsel Ford, the Atoms for Peace Awards grew directly from the international program for peaceful atomic development associated with President Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace initiative. Ford committed one million dollars to the program, administered through an organization closely associated with MIT; ten awards were ultimately made between 1957 and 1969.
The introductory 1956 publication is itself a substantial founding document rather than simply an announcement. It sets forth the history and purposes of the award and includes William Clay Ford's account of its establishment. The inaugural 1957 Bohr volume contains John Archibald Wheeler's "No Fugitive and Cloistered Virtue," the award citation, Bohr's response, remarks by Eisenhower, and Arthur Holly Compton's "Nuclear Energy and the Growth of Man." Subsequent volumes similarly combine portraits, citations, responses and addresses, transforming what might otherwise have been ceremonial programs into a continuing documentary record of the intellectual and political culture surrounding nuclear science.
The roster is extraordinary: Bohr, de Hevesy, Szilard, Wigner, Weinberg, Zinn, Cockcroft, McMillan, Rabi, Salam, Mottelson and others—physicists, chemists, reactor scientists and administrators central to the development of twentieth-century atomic science. The series traces the effort to redirect knowledge born partly from wartime nuclear research toward reactors, medicine, fundamental physics and international scientific cooperation, while simultaneously documenting one of the characteristic instruments of American scientific diplomacy during the Cold War.
Complete runs are notably difficult to assemble, particularly with provenance connecting the publications to the organization responsible for their production. A coherent primary-source archive of the institutional history and public presentation of postwar atomic science.
Complete first edition run of The Presentation of the Atoms for Peace Award, published in Cambridge, MA by Atoms for Peace Awards, Inc., 1956-1969. Nine items. Original printed wrappers, approximately 8vo, the presentation volumes embossed and silver-stamped with the obverse and reverse of the award medal; illustrated with b/w photographic portraits. Generally very good, with uniform toning to wrappers, occasional edge wear, minor creasing, and a one-inch closed tear on the 1957 issue. The complete contemporary publication sequence: the 1956 founding prospectus, followed by the presentation volumes for Niels Henrik David Bohr (1957); George Charles de Hevesy (1959); Leo Szilard, Eugene Paul Wigner, Alvin Martin Weinberg and Walter Henry Zinn (1960); Sir John Cockcroft (1961); Vladimir Iosifovich Veksler and Edwin Mattison McMillan (1963); Bertrand Leopold Goldschmidt, Wilfrid Bennett Lewis and Isidor Isaac Rabi (1967); Sigvard Eklund, Abdus Salam and Henry DeWolf Smyth (1968); and Dwight David Eisenhower, Aage Niels Bohr, Floyd Leroy Culler Jr., Henry Seymour Kaplan, Ben Roy Mottelson, Compton Alexander Rennie and Anthony Leonid Turkevich (1969). A later retrospective publication appeared in 1978 and is not part of this contemporary presentation sequence.
With significant institutional provenance: the 1956 volume retains a manuscript note recording that the group came from Bruce Leggett of MIT, executive secretary of the Atoms for Peace Awards. The MIT archival collection of the organization is substantially composed of Leggett's files and includes his correspondence with Aage Bohr, Cockcroft, de Hevesy, Eklund, Eisenhower, James Killian, Rabi, Szilard and Wigner—many of the figures represented in these volumes.
Established in 1955 by the Ford Motor Company as a memorial to Henry and Edsel Ford, the Atoms for Peace Awards grew directly from the international program for peaceful atomic development associated with President Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace initiative. Ford committed one million dollars to the program, administered through an organization closely associated with MIT; ten awards were ultimately made between 1957 and 1969.
The introductory 1956 publication is itself a substantial founding document rather than simply an announcement. It sets forth the history and purposes of the award and includes William Clay Ford's account of its establishment. The inaugural 1957 Bohr volume contains John Archibald Wheeler's "No Fugitive and Cloistered Virtue," the award citation, Bohr's response, remarks by Eisenhower, and Arthur Holly Compton's "Nuclear Energy and the Growth of Man." Subsequent volumes similarly combine portraits, citations, responses and addresses, transforming what might otherwise have been ceremonial programs into a continuing documentary record of the intellectual and political culture surrounding nuclear science.
The roster is extraordinary: Bohr, de Hevesy, Szilard, Wigner, Weinberg, Zinn, Cockcroft, McMillan, Rabi, Salam, Mottelson and others—physicists, chemists, reactor scientists and administrators central to the development of twentieth-century atomic science. The series traces the effort to redirect knowledge born partly from wartime nuclear research toward reactors, medicine, fundamental physics and international scientific cooperation, while simultaneously documenting one of the characteristic instruments of American scientific diplomacy during the Cold War.
Complete runs are notably difficult to assemble, particularly with provenance connecting the publications to the organization responsible for their production. A coherent primary-source archive of the institutional history and public presentation of postwar atomic science.
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