SIGNED BY NOBELIST. Science and the New Civilization by Millikan, Robert A - 1930

New York & London: Scribner's, 1930. First edition.

ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE AND SOCIETY BY NOBELIST PRESIDENT OF CALTECH INSCRIBED TO LUMBER BARON.

13X19 cm hardcover, red cloth binding, gilt title to spine, inscribed front free endpaper, "To Mr & Mrs R. R. Blacker/ With the compliments and admiration of/ Robert A. Millikan." [i-x], 194 pp. spine faded, very good in custom archival mylar cover.

ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN (1868 –1953) was an American experimental physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect. In 1896 he became an assistant at the University of Chicago, where he became a full professor in 1910. In 1909 Millikan began a series of experiments to determine the electric charge carried by a single electron. In 1914 Millikan took up with similar skill the experimental verification of the equation introduced by Albert Einstein in 1905 to describe the photoelectric effect. He used this same research to obtain an accurate value of Planck's constant. In 1921 Millikan left the University of Chicago to become director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. There he undertook a major study of the radiation that the physicist Victor Hess had detected coming from outer space. Millikan proved that this radiation is indeed of extraterrestrial origin, and he named it "cosmic rays." As first president of Caltech from 1920 until 1946, Millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the United States. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953. Science and the New Civilization (offered here) brings together a series of articles some of which were published in The Atlantic Monthly, Science, and Scribner's Magazine.

PROVENANCE: ROBERT ROE BLACKER (1845 –1931) was a Canadian-born American politician and lumber baron. By 1900, Blacker was a millionaire lumberman and salt manufacturer. In 1882, Blacker was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives to represent the Manistee County district. In 1884, he was re-elected. In 1888, Blacker was elected Manistee mayor, and served for four consecutive terms. He moved to Pasadena, California after his retirement in 1907.