OPPENHEIMER, J. Robert, The Problems of the Interaction Of Elementary Particles: Transcriptions of Lectures by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Given At The California Institute Of Technology (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena), [1950]

280 x 216mm; pp. 87 leaves, printed on rectos only

Very good condition: stapled as issued, with three hole punches; top edge chipped; final leaf detached, browned to the verso

A lecture series giving a synthesis of the astonishing progress made in Quantum Electrodynamics in the years leading up to 1950.

Oppenheimer himself had presided over a series of landmark postwar conferences on quantum physics, 1947–1949 (at Shelter Island, Pocono and Oldstone), which had seen the convergence of research by Richard Feynman, Julius Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. As Schweber points out in QED and the Men Who Made It, Oppenheimer’s Caltech lectures stand at the pinnacle of this achievement (Introduction, xxviii).

In spite of his fame for the development of the atomic bomb, it is the subject of elementary particle interaction that provides the leitmotif for Oppenheimer’s whole career: his first major papers of the late 1920s were on this topic, and immediately after the war Oppenheimer sought to use his position as a ‘statesman of science’ to oversee a new research programme on quantum physics, culminating in the present work.

Very scarce: only three copies located: Richard Latter Papers at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives; two copies at Caltech Library (one in the William A. Fowler Papers).