Dumond, Jess W.M. DuMond — Autobiography of a Physicist, Complete in Two Volumes

Pasadena, California, Self-published, 1976. First Edition. Softcover. Size: 4to 11" - 13" tall. Complete in two volumes, an engaging autobiography by the California-based physicist, Jesse William Monroe DuMond (July 11, 1892 – December 4, 1976). Stiff blue card-stock binding, black tape over spines, chipped a bit, wraps a bit sunned, very lightly soiled, else clean and unmarked of interior but for the fact of a photocopied insertion of DuMond's bibliography (177 items, all in) between Table of Contents and first page of text in Volume I. Pasted-on paper label titles to each front cover. Dedicated gratefully to his second wife, Louse Marie (Baillet) DuMond, whom he thanks at end of Volume II the entirety of which she typed. 28 chapters, all in, between the two volumes. DuMond was an American experimental physicist. DuMond was born a U.S. citizen in France, his father being the landscape painter Frederick Melville DuMond (1867 - 1927). His Wikipedia entry notes that his mother Louise Adele Kerr died at his age two, so he moved to Paris when a wee lad and then to the U.S. to live with paternal grandparents in Rochester, New York. He earned a Bachelor's degree in 1916 from the Throop College of Technology (later to become California Institute of Technology), worked steadily as an engineer and physicist to and through and following W.W.I., then for General Electric, then at the Thomson-Houston Company in Paris before joining the National Bureau of Standards. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and stayed there, retiring in 1963 (Wikipedia). He had a productive, influential career in both business and private industry and was a member of many scientific clubs and societies. Wikipedia notes that the author "became famous for investigating the line broadening in the Compton effect due to the speed distribution of the electrons in the atom. To this end, he developed a new type of X-ray spectrometer with several crystals and also had the original idea for X-ray spectrometers with curved crystal surfaces." All in, an exceedingly scarce item in the trade (there being no additional copies available on-line currently. Volume I: vii [17], 1-186 pp.; Volume II: [4], iii, 187-390 pp.Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. . . . Good