The Nobel Prize Medal for Physics awarded in 1936 to the Austrian scientist who discovered cosmic radiation, Victor Hess, will be offered at Bonhams’ Fine Books and Manuscripts sale in New York on Wednesday June 7th. The medal, accompanied by its elaborate award document in its blue leather portfolio, is estimated at $300,000 to $500,000. Before Hess’s ground-breaking discovery, scientists had assumed that radiation was emanating from the earth. A series of hot air balloon flights made between 1911 and 1913, in which Hess ascended into the atmosphere and measured the ionization, enabled him to prove the opposite. He demonstrated that the effect was stronger at higher altitudes than at ground level, indicating that the radiation being measured was not coming from naturally occurring radioactive elements on earth. Further experiments conducted during a solar eclipse, in which his measurements did not vary, ruled out the sun a
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