The more than 3,000 publications on the history of atomic energy in the collection in Oregon State University should be of value to everyone interested in nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, as well as nuclear physics. Laudamus and Krishnamurthy have now published a catalog of the holdings. The catalog is divided into fifteen sections, starting with early physics from 1896 up to the beginning of the Manhattan Project for the development of the atomic bomb. Within each section the publications are listed in alphabetical order of the name of the author or the source of the publication.

Knowledge about the properties of atomic nuclei began with the discovery of radioactivity.

The physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röentgen, in Wurzburg, Germany, reported in 1895 that he had discovered a new kind of radiation, which he called x-rays. The radiation was emitted from a glass tube in which there was an electric discharge. The French mathematician Henri Poincaré then suggested that the emission of x-rays might be connected with the fluorescence of the glass wall of the tube. Henri Becquerel was curator of minerology in Paris, and he knew that compounds of uranium fluoresced when they were put in sunlight. He accordingly put a compound of uranium in sunlight and then put it next to a photographic plate wrapped in black paper. The plate was found to be exposed, which seemed to support Poincaré's suggestion, except that Becquerel discovered that the photographic plate would be blackened even if the compound of uranium had not been subjected to light to cause it to fluoresce. Becquerel is represented in the Oregon State University collection by several publications, and many other contributions to the understanding of the nature of radioactivity are also represented by their publications.

The neutron is one of the particles of which atomic nuclei are formed, the other one being the proton. Direct experimental evidence for the existence of the neutron was not obtained until 1932, but in fact the possibility of its existence was first suggested, on the basis of information about the properties of the isotopes of the lighter elements, by William D. Harkins, professor of physical chemistry in the University of Chicago, in 1921. In the same year Ernest Rutherford, in Cambridge, made the same suggestion, giving reference to Harkins. Most physicists seem not to know that it was in fact Harkins who was the first to suggest the existence of the neutron, as well as the two heavier isotopes of hydrogen. Harkins is represented in the collection by ten papers, which comprise important early contributions to nuclear physics.

The documents relating to the Manhattan Project include several editions of the report on this work by Henry D. Smyth, including the first edition, which was published and sent to many scientists only five days after the Hiroshima bomb had been dropped.

The Oregon State University collection of documents on the history of atomic energy contains most of the publications in the field, and is sure to be of value to historians and others. (Written by Linus C. Pauling)