Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb Under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940-1945.

SMYTH, Henry DeWolf [Richard P. Feynman] [J. Robert Oppenheimer].

Item Number: 145206

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945.

First edition of the full text of Smyth’s official report on the development of the atomic bomb by the U.S. Government. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated with photographs and diagrams. Richard Feynman’s father’s copy, inscribed by him on the front free endpaper “11/4/45 / M.G. Feynman / 1502 Mott Ave / Far Rockaway,” and signed by Richard Feynman in the margin of page 166 where he is referenced in the text. The Smyth Report offered the public the first account of the development of the atomic bomb, “carried out between 1940 and 1945 by the American-directed by internationally-recruited team of physicists under the code name of ‘Manhattan District’…Compiled by Professor Henry Dewolf Smyth of Princeton, a consultant to the ‘Manhattan District’ project at Los Alamos, whose commandant General Leslie R. Groves provided the foreword” (Printing and the Mind of Man, 422e). Near fine in a very good supplied dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell made by the Harcourt Bindery. We have never seen another example signed by Feynman. Rare and desirable.

Written as a "report to the nation" by Henry D. Smyth, chairman of the Princeton physics department, at the direction of Major General Groves, in charge of the Atomic Bomb Project, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes begins with a brief survey of the advances in nuclear physics made between 1896 and 1940, and then proceeds to tell the incredible story of the scientific and engineering teamwork that culminated in the manufacturing of the atomic bomb.