The mean square polarizability radii of the proton have been measured for the first time in a virtualCompton-scattering experiment performed at the MIT-Bates out-of-plane scattering facility. Response functions and polarizabilities obtained from a dispersion analysis of the data at Q 2 0:057 GeV 2 =c 2 are in agreement with Op 3 heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. The data support the dominance of mesonic effects in the polarizabilities. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.212001 PACS numbers: 13.60.Fz, 13.40.Gp, 14.20.Dh The electromagnetic polarizabilities of the nucleon provide a vital testing ground for theories of low-energy QCD and nucleon structure, and are of compelling experimental and theoretical interest [1]. In the case of atomic polarizabilities the electric polarizability is approximately equal to the atomic volume. By contrast, the electric polarizability of the nucleon is approximately 10 4 times smaller than the nucleon volume, demonstrating in a qualitative fashion the extreme stiffness of the nucleon relative to the atom. Although the electric and magnetic polarizabilities of the proton and are known with reasonable accuracy [2] from real Compton scattering (RCS), much less is known about the polarizability distributions inside the nucleon. To measure these distributions it is necessary to use the virtual-Compton-scattering (VCS) reaction [3], where the incident photon is virtual. At low Q 2 it is expected [4] that Q 2 should decrease with increasing Q 2 with a characteristic length scale given by the pion range. The first VCS experiments at Mainz [5] at Q 2 0:33 GeV 2 =c 2 and later at Jefferson Lab (JLab) [6] at Q 2 0:92 and 1:76 GeV 2 =c 2 established that Q 2 is falling off, but with a form inconsistent with a simple dipole shape [6]. By contrast, because of the destructive interference between paramagnetism and diamagnetism which is necessary to generate a small , Q 2 is predicted [4] to be relatively flat as a function of Q 2 with a 20% peaking near Q 2 0:1 GeV 2 =c 2 caused by a paramagnetic pion-loop contribution that increases with Q 2 . This Letter reports on a VCS experiment on the proton performed at the out-ofplane scattering facility at the MIT-Bates linear accelerator at Q 2 0:057 GeV 2 =c 2 . Data taken at this low Q 2 can provide a test of chiral perturbation theory (ChPT), and are sensitive to the mean square electric and magnetic polarizability radii. At this low value of Q 2 ChPT also predicts increased sensitivity to the polarizabilities Q 2 and Q 2 relative to the Mainz kinematics [4]. The relationship between VCS cross sections and the polarizabilities is most easily seen in the low-energy expansion (LEX) of the unpolarized VCS cross section [3],where q (q 0 ) is the incident (final) photon three-momenta in the photon-nucleon c.m. frame, " is the photon polarization, () is the c.m. polar (azimuthal) angle for the outgoing photon, and is a phase space factor. d 5 BHBorn is the cross section for the Bethe-Heitler Born amplitudes only, i.e., no nucleon structure, and is e...