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[Robert S. Mulliken]. Scientific Archive of Textbooks and Ephemera.... (Total: 3 )
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[Robert S. Mulliken]. Scientific Archive of Textbooks and Ephemera.An extensive archive of textbooks, coursework, correspondence, journals, and personal documents tracing the arc of Robert S. Mulliken's scientific life, from his early education and first experiments to his groundbreaking later career. The material spans his elementary and high school years through his graduate studies and early professional work, documenting the development of one of the 20th-century's most influential chemists.
The earliest documents include Mulliken's report cards from the Newburyport Jackson Grammar School and Newburyport High School, dated 1903 to 1913. They show him to be an exceptional student; his few "B" grades were, fittingly, in math, chemistry, and physics. Mulliken graduated as valedictorian in 1913, delivering a commencement speech titled The Electron. The text, printed in the included graduation booklet The High School Record 1913, shows a remarkable early grasp of atomic theory and imagination for its future possibilities: "As for the human beings of the future, why may they not learn to use the stupendous energy hidden in the atoms, and keep the whole earth always alive and warm, or even migrate to another planet? Perhaps life is a characteristic of matter, and man is an agent whose part in a cycle of the universe is to help break up old worlds and make them into new." His elementary and high school graduation diplomas are also present.
Mulliken then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his undergraduate degree, majoring in chemistry. Included is an acceptance letter from the Wheelright Scientific School dated August 27, 1913, a scholarship fund that provides educational grants to science majors from Newburyport. Mulliken excelled at his coursework; there are more than 150 pages of coursework, exams, and lab notes taken by Mulliken throughout his undergraduate career, 1913-1917. This includes a 1915 booklet made for a biology course he took, with full illustrations and descriptions of animal and plant organs in Mulliken's hand. There are also more than seventy pages of handwritten notes from Mulliken's chemistry lab work, illustrated with hand-drawn diagrams. A copy of his graduation certificate from MIT is included, stating that he graduated on June 12, 1917.
At the time of his graduation, the United States had entered World War I. Mulliken briefly left academia to work in chemical weapons research with the Army's Chemical Warfare Service before enrolling in the University of Chicago's Ph.D. program in 1919. His doctoral research focused on separating isotopes of mercury by evaporation, an early step toward understanding atomic structure. Included here is a typescript and handwritten lecture titled Science and Life: Talk Delivered to the Inter-Science Club (January 1920), in which he explores the relationship between science and philosophy, and a ninety-three-page handwritten report on thermodynamics completed in spring 1920.
In a May 1, 1921 letter to his mother from Chicago, Mulliken writes that he hopes to see an upcoming lecture by Einstein, despite the lecture being in German: "Einstein is to give some lectures here next week, in German, about Relativity - we all want to go just to see him, not expecting to understand."
After earning his Ph.D., Mulliken quickly gained recognition in the scientific community for his research on isotope separation, which provided the groundwork for his later contributions to quantum chemistry, as well as his work on the Manhattan Project some two decades later. A December 28, 1922 letter to Mulliken's mother from Emma B. Moore congratulates the family on his growing reputation, accompanying a front-page article in the Boston Evening Transcript (December 27, 1922) reporting on his work at the University of Chicago: "Dr. Robert S. Mulliken, national research fellow in physical chemistry at the University of Chicago, told members of the chemical section of partial and incomplete success in the effort being made in the Chicago laboratories to separate chlorine, mercury, and other elements into the different ingredients of which present-day chemistry believes them to be composed."
Accompanying his documents are 42 scientific texts and pamphlets from Mulliken's personal library, in English and German, many related to his coursework at MIT and the University of Chicago. A brief sample of titles is as follows:
Robert Andrews Millikan. Mechanics, Molecular Physics and Heat: A Twelve Weeks' College Course. Boston: Ginn and Company, [1902]. 8vo. Original green cloth, spine and upper cover stamped in black. Later edition. Handwritten notes by Mulliken dated November 22, 1920 laid-in. - Linus Pauling and Samuel Goudsmit. The Structure of Line Spectra. London: McGraw-Hill, 1930. 8vo. Original pebbled green cloth, spine stamped in black and gilt, covers stamped in blind. First edition, signed by Mulliken on the front free endpaper, "Robert S. Mulliken." - A. Hunter Dupree. Science in the Federal Government. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. 8vo, original brown cloth binding, spine and upper cover stamped in gilt; original pictorial dust jacket. First edition, inscribed by Mulliken on the front free endpaper, "Robert S. Mulliken / 3/8/57 / from J. W. Joyce, Head of NSF IGY Office." - Robert C. Weast. Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Ohio: The Chemical Rubber Co., 1969. 50th Edition in commemorative binding, copy numbered "21." Signed by Mulliken on the upper cover and the front free endpaper, "R S Mulliken." - Robert S. Mulliken. Life of a Scientist. New York: Springer-Verlag, [1989]. 8vo. Original printed paper binding. First edition, advanced copy, received by Mulliken in April, 1989.
Also includes 11 of Mulliken's personal diaries and school notebooks, dated from 1908 to 1918.
Condition: Condition of books and documents generally good; age-related wear, including staining, toning, creasing, minor chips or separations throughout.
Provenance: From the personal collection of the 1966 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, Robert S. Mulliken; thence by descent.
Auction Info
2025 December 15 Rare Books Signature® Auction #6323 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
December, 2025
15th
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