N E WSLETTER OF THE FRIENDS OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY BANCROFTIANA N UMBER 125 • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY • FALL 2004 100 Years of Physics at Berkeley . and Bancroft n its first hundred years Berkeley dent and president of the University contained the largest telescope of its Iphysicists built a program that is (1875-1881). Interesting documents kind in the world, which was used by one of the University’s most dazzling and images in the exhibit were drawn the physicists and instantly established achievements, and its history is richly from the LeConte family papers, the nascent University’s research documented in the collections of The including LeConte’s personal journal, reputation. Bancroft Library. These facts were which documents his life as an officer As the exhibit showed, the readily apparent in an exhibit, “Break- of the Confederacy, as well as lecture department’s rise to greatness steadily ing Through: A Century of Physics at and research notes compiled as a continued following Raymond Thayer Berkeley, 1868-1968,” that was on Berkeley professor. Birge’s (1887-1980) appointment to display in the library’s gallery from The story of the Lick Observatory, the faculty in 1918. Birge was a skilled April through July 2004. the first of the University’s many administrator who was also passionate The exhibit included nearly 100 world-class research facilities, was also about teaching and research. When he documents, images, books, and artifacts liberally illustrated. The gift of an retired in 1955, Birge had served as drawn from the library’s collections. eccentric San Franciscan, James Lick department chair for 23 years, super- Most of these are contained in the (1796-1876), the observatory opened vised 343 doctoral dissertations, and administrative archives of the Depart- on Mt. enjoyed an international reputation ment of Physics, the Office of the Hamilton in for his work on the light emitted by President, and the Office of the Chan- Santa Clara atoms and molecules. cellor. A voluminous, highly significant County when The exhibit included two contem- collection of materials is also found in the University porary publications reflecting the the papers of individual faculty mem- was barely 20 department’s achievements. In one, bers including John LeConte, years old. It the editors of Science identify Berkeley Raymond Thayer Birge, and six of as a “national center for research” in Berkeley’s seven Nobel laureates in physics, the only designee west of physics. Chicago (1928); in another, a piece by The Physics Department and Birge appears as the lead article in the Library, the Lawrence Berkeley first number of The Physical Review National Laboratory, and the Supplement, forerunner of the presti- Lawrence Hall of Science also gious Reviews in Modern Physics loaned images and objects that (1929). further enhanced the exhibit. This was also the period when two The record shows that the of Berkeley’s most famous physicists University literally began with joined the faculty. Ernest O. Lawrence physics. The Regents’ first faculty (1901-1958) and J. Robert appointment was the physicist John Oppenheimer (1904-1967) blazed LeConte (1818-1891), who was a key new trails that put Berkeley’s experi- member of the Regents’ committee mental and theoretical programs in that organized the first administration Model for Cyclotron Chamber, 1931. One of the earliest the first rank of atomic research particle accelerators, built by Lawrence and a graduate and established the curriculum. student, Stanley Livingston, using shards of glass, metal, worldwide. Lawrence invented the LeConte later served as acting presi- wires, and wax. Courtesy Lawrence Hall of Science. Continued on page 3 N E WSLETTER OF THE FRIENDS OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY From the Director Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Bancroft has three of those copies. founder of the fine print tradition on the Some questions immediately arise: West Coast. Nash amassed a library of Where did Bancroft’s three copies come over 5,000 volumes to document the from? And why do we need, three copies, greatest monuments in the history of even of a very rare book, anyway? The printing. Purchased for the University in two questions are intertwined. The first 1944, it brought to the Library specimens two copies came to Bancroft when the of the works of the greatest printers from ne of the more improbable Library transferred its rare book collec- Gutenberg to Nash himself. The collec- Obooks on the bestseller lists this tion to us in 1970. Copy 1, bound in a tion was “presented to the University of past summer (number 3 on the New York near-contemporary blind-stamped black California, Robert Gordon Sproul, Time’s list as I write) is The Rule of Four, a calf binding, bears a note in a late 16th or President, By Mr. and Mrs. Milton S. murder mystery wrapped inside an early 17th century hand on the flyleaf: Ray, Cecily, Virginia and Rosalyn Ray historical enigma: the meaning of the “Vide Iudicium huius libri apud D. V. and the Ray Oil Burner Company,” Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, decoded in Antonium Augustinum Terraconensem according to the handsome engraved the course of the novel by a pair of Episcopum Dialogo .xj. De suspect. book plate inside the front cover. The Princeton undergraduates. The novel, Antiq. Inscript. pag. 295 qui extat in hac copy is very clean, unfortunately almost written by two boyhood friends, Ian Bibliotheca G.IV.109.” ‘See the judgment without annotations. Bibliophiles prefer Caldwell and Dustin Thomas, the former of this book in Dialogue XI of the De pristine copies; scholars like them all of whom did indeed attend Princeton, Suspect. Antiq. Inscript, p. 295, of Anto- marked up, because the notes indicate the undoubtedly owes much of its success to nio Agustín, Bishop of Tarragona, which sort of things that readers were interested its generic resemblance to The Da Vinci is found in this library at [shelfmark] in and therefore how the book was read. Code, another murder mystery based on G.IV.109.’ Agustín (1516-1587), in Copy 2 has a page of manuscript medieval legend. addition to being a bishop, was also an notes in Latin on one of the last flyleaves. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, accomplished classicist and an expert on These serve as a rough index of some of however, is a real book, perhaps the most medieval canon and civil law. The work the woodcuts or inscriptions, and copy beautiful book printed in the 15th cited is his Diálogos de medallas, passages of particular interest to the century. Published by the humanist inscriciones y otras antigüedades, originally annotator. Like Copy 1, this copy also printer Aldus Manutius in Venice in written in Spanish and published in that gives evidence of its passage from the 1499, it has long puzzled scholars. Its title language in Madrid in 1744. The learned Mediterranean lands to Anglo-Saxon has been translated as “The Strife of Love bishop entertained the liveliest doubts as hands. On the verso of the last flyleaf one in a Dream of Poliphilus,” and it is to the authenticity of the finds a half-effaced inscription “Madrid y written in a curious combination of Hypnerotomachia’s Latin inscriptions. Of … 1697,” and inside the front cover, in Italian, Latin, and Greek, with some the book itself he says, “It seems that he pencil, “ex libris Lord Bagot – Stafford- Egyptian hieroglyphics for good measure. wished to write about his dreams and shire,” referring to the armorial supra- The author is identified only by an foolishness in Italian, and he mixed so libros on the binding. The date of the acrostic composed from the first letter of many Greek and Latin words and sought binding would accord well with the each chapter. No one knows who that such obscurity and mixture of these three second lord, Sir Charles Bagot (1781- person, Fra Francesco Colonna, was; and languages that we can say that he wrote 1843), British diplomat, who died as one of the charms of The Rule of Four is in none of them.” governor-general of Canada and whose its clever attempt to solve the riddle of A roughly contemporary note gives library was sold at auction in London in the author’s identity. the name “Petri Americij,” ‘Of Petrus 1844. The book came to Berkeley as a In the brief Historical Note at the Americius,’ presumably a former owner. bequest from UC Regent and library beginning, the authors state: “The In the late nineteenth or early benefactor James K. Moffitt in 1955, one Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the twentieth century the book came into the of 1500 volumes added to the University’s most treasured and least understood hands of Herschel V. Jones (1861-1928), Rare Book Department as a memorial to books of early Western printing. Fewer editor of the Minneapolis Journal and a his wife, Pauline Fore Moffitt. Moffitt was copies of it survive today than do copies noted collector of Americana. In one of a renowned collector of Horace, Virgil, of the Gutenberg Bible.” his sales it passed to the San Francisco and the works of the early Italian human- printer, John Henry Nash (1871-1947), ists. P AGE 2 / FALL 2004 N E WSLETTER OF THE FRIENDS OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY PHYSICS Contnued from page 1 Copy 3 came to Bancroft just two years ago, the gift of Gale Herrick, a bibliophile interested in fine printing and fine binding, like Moffitt, and a long-time member of the Friends of The Bancroft Library. Bound in modern parchment, perhaps from the turn of the twentieth century, it bears a printed “ex libris a.r.s.” Of the three copies, this is the one that is in the best condition, with virtually no marginalia.