[4], 360, [4] pp., comprising the whole of Mémoires de l'Académiie des Sciences, Vol. 46. With 13 collotype plates. 11¼x9, original printed blue-gray wrappers. First Edition.

The first printing of Becquerel's landmark treatise on radioactivity, taking up the entire issue of the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France, Vol. 46. Printing and the Mind of Man, 393, calls this "His definitive work, containing, a chronological narrative of his investigations, his mature conclusions and a bibliography of 214 treatises on radioactivity, dating from his first paper in 1896." He and the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. The photographs reproduced in collotype at the rear of the work provide dramatic evidence of uranium radiation (originally called "Becquerel Rays") on his lab plates. With typed catalogue description from John Howell-Books, 1977, laid in.