The aim of this textbook is to give a student a thorough understanding of the principal features of nuclei, of nuclear decays and of nuclear reactions. The properties of nuclei at low excitation and low angular momentum have been thoroughly studied and are now generally understood, and current research is on nuclei at high interaction energies, high angular momentum and far from the valley of stability. Several models have been developed to explain the observed wide variety of phenomena and I have attempted to describe and justify them, and also to explain the connections between them in some detail. This involves trying to give a microscopic description of nuclei, which is an intriguing many-body problem and forms an important part of this book. Besides this interest, parts of nuclear physics are of importance in the study of elementary particle physics and several nuclear phenomena have particular significance in other fields: for example, fission in nuclear power, fusion in astrophysics and radioactivity in biological tracer techniques. Consequently, nuclear physics is an important part of any physics undergraduate course.

In the first part of the book, several models are described and used to explain nuclear properties with many illustrative examples given. Sections follow on α-, β- and γ-decay, fission, thermonuclear fusion, reactions, nuclear forces and nuclear collective motion. In all of these, many examples are discussed and the student should gain a thorough grounding in our current knowledge of the nucleus. A lot of interesting experimental techniques have been developed to study nuclei and examples of these are also given.