Table of contents

I am sorry, but Professor Ziman's editorial is simply not good enough. Reduction may equal destruction, but I would like to see a proof.

How can scientists write better ? This question has been asked many times.

The July issue of Physics Bulletin carried a brief report on the manpower paper of the Department of Employment on Employment Prospects for the Highly Qualified. As you noted, this paper is aimed at those contemplating entry into higher education and their advisers.

A Code of Practice for the Detailed Statement of Accuracy (my emphasis) reviewed in the July issue of Physics Bulletin is by the flesh and blood P J Campion (et at) and not the phantom P J Chapman (et at) Just one of these random errors?

A small unit to promote and coordinate the interchange of scientific talent between government and other employers has been set up by the Civil Service Department. The decision springs from the recommendations of the 'task force' on the interchange of scientists, headed by Sir Hermann Bondi, which was set up in 1972.

Next month a new standing committee of The Institute of Physics will come into being and will provide an opportunity for much closer involvement by members in all the activities of the Institute. The new committee, to be named the Standing Committee for Regional and Professional Affairs, is the successor of the External and Professional Matters Committee and will report direct to Council.

Although the Institute combines the functions of a professional institute and a learned society, the dominant impression of the Institute's activities is of concern with the subject of physics and of the latest advances in it. This tendency is perhaps most clearly displayed by the affiliation of the honorary secretaries of the Institute's Groups and Branches.

A dismal situation has come about in the universities because of cuts in government expenditure and the effects of inflation. All universities are running at a loss and the result is confusion and a radical, completely unplanned reappraisal of where tertiary education is going in the next few years.

The long drawn-out story of the provision of high flux neutron beams for British scientists came to a close on 19 July, when an agreement was signed in Grenoble making the UK an equal partner in the high flux beam reactor (HFBR) with the French and Germans. Following several changes of course during the last ten years (see Physics Bulletin January 1973 p8) the UK finally agreed to join the existing Franco-German HFBR project at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) at Grenoble, and British scientists have had access to the Grenoble reactor on equal terms with their French and German partners since January 1973.

Up to four times as many people are likely to suffer unacceptable nuisance due to road traffic noise by 1980 as did in 1970, warns the Noise Advisory Council. In a discussion of noise nuisance during the next ten years the Council notes that noise presents an increasing intrusion into the everyday lives of people and that action must be taken now if the quality of life is not to deteriorate further.

There is much talk these days of the relative importance of teaching and research in universities. The rank and file think that research is overrated and that the good teacher is as important to the university as the good researcher; they would like to see teaching given as much weight as research in considering candidates for promotion.

Dr Anthony Kelly, F Inst P, FRS is to take up the post of Vice Chancellor at the University of Surrey on the retirement of Dr DMA Leggett. Dr Kelly, a material scientist, has had a distinguished academic career after obtaining his first degree at Reading University.

The graph below shows the number of digital computers costing at least £10000 installed by government departments on 31 December of each year. Curve A shows the total number; curve B shows the number used for administrative and general purposes; curve C shows the number used for scientific and technical purposes.

Technicians are the backbone of British industry, according to the Chairman of the new Technician Education Council, Mr A L Burton, and it is in an effort to reinforce the status of technicians in the metallurgical and allied fields that a new Institute of Metallurgical Technicians was created in July. The new Institute is an offspring of the Institution of Metallurgists which has now closed its technician grade and is hoping that the Institute will grow rapidly to represent metallurgical technicians.

Many details of the natural process of evaporation are still a mystery despite its vital importance. Can man reduce evaporation?

A new determination of the speed of light, c, with an uncertainty of only ± 2.7 × 10^-9, has been completed at the National Physical Laboratory by a combined team from the Divisions of Quantum Metrology and Electrical Science. The method adopted was to obtain c by measuring both the frequency and wavelength of monochromatic radiation by means of the relationship c = vλ and the procedure was based on the R(12) line of the CO₂ laser at 9.3 μm.

Something of a scoop may be claimed by the Combustion Physics Group of the Institute, whose meeting on 'Novel methods of winning, burning and conserving fuels' at Imperial College, London on 10 July fell right between the two government announcements on energy conservation and the next nuclear reactor type. It was thus a highly topical meeting, as the number of participants testified: of approximately 130 people who attended, a quarter came from universities and more than a third each from private industry and from nationalized industry and government research establishments.

On 27 and 28 June the University College of North Wales played host to the Plasma Physics Group, for the summer meeting on 'Plasma physics'. The experiment of holding a two-day conference covering a rather wide range of topics proved remarkably successful, thanks to the excellence of the scientific programme, and the cooperative effects of a Welsh folk evening.

The fifth in the series of congresses organized by the International Radiation Research Society was held in Seattle in July. These meetings are multidisciplinary in character and there was much to interest the physicist.

An experimental system that can transmit blackboard writing over ordinary telephone lines to remote classes is now being tested at the University of Illinois. The system designed at the Bell Laboratories is far less costly than closed circuit television, the only comparable system for instantaneously transmitting both audio and visual information.

The Energy Technology Support Unit was brought formally into existence in mid-April following an exchange of letters between the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Authority, as a result of negotiations which took place over some months previously. The stimulus was the crisis precipitated by the curtailment of oil production and the rapid escalation in fuel prices during the second half of 1973.

Over the past few years, there have been numerous reports and articles in both the popular and the educational press of changes occurring in the schools of England; changes which may strike many readers brought up in a more stable situation in 'traditional' physics as both puzzling and worrying. Such courses as Nuffield Physics, Combined Science, Integrated Science, Physical Science and Engineering Science compete with each other.

We all have to present physics in various ways. Some of us have to lecture to students or supervise their work.

William Berkson London: Rout ledge and Kegan Paul 1914 pp xiii + 370 price £6–50

It is often the case that the title alone of abook induces a sense of keen anticipation that all too often is not sustained by the text itself. I am happy to report that Dr Berkson's book amply confirmed the initial excitement that I had felt on first seeing it mentioned in Physics Today.

Julian Schwinger Massachusetts: Addison Wesley 1973 pp 459 price $18.50

This volume is the second member of Schwinger's trilogy on relativistic quantum fields and the theory of sources. The discussion in volume 2 is concerned entirely with quantum electrodynamics and brings together many results which otherwise tend to be scattered in the literature.

E C G Sudarshan and Y Ne'eman (eds) London: Gordon and Breach 1973 pp xi + 819 price £14–55

This is the proceedings of a symposium ings of a joint German–Israeli symposium elementary particle physics, the 1960s were the years of the Brookhaven and CERN proton synchrotrons, and of resonances, Regge poles, current algebra, soft pions and the quark model. It is an attractive idea to stand back a little and take a critical look at the achievements of the decade.

Francis Bitter and H A Medicus Amsterdam: Elsevier 1973 pp xiii + 688 price $20.80

This book, an introduction to electromagnetic wave phenomena and quantum physics, was developed from an earlier textbook by Francis Bitter, Currents, Fields and Particles, and is intended to be used by American undergraduates who have taken introductory courses in mechanics, electricity and magnetism, including Maxwell's equations, special relativity, solutions to the wave differential equation and thermodynamics. The authors have set out to show at an elementary level how the classical concepts of waves, fields and particles lead on to the development of wave mechanics and the theory of atoms and molecules, solids, nuclear structure and elementary particles.

P C Clemmow London: Cambridge University Press 1973 pp xi + 297 price £5.40 (cased) £2–40 (paperback)

This book is aimed at physics undergraduates in their second and, possibly, first years of studies. The task of producing a textbook covering a significant part of the undergraduate syllabus on electromagnetism within 300 pages has been well accomplished by the author.

Alister Hardy et al London: Hutchinson 1973 pp 280 price £3

In a series of well carried out experiments subjects were induced to go to sleep hypnotically over distances of up to a kilometre or more. Telepathy ?

Bernard Jouffrey (ed) Paris: Société Francaise de Microscopie Electronique 1972 pp xvi + 546 price Fr 177.2

In 1969, a summer school on recent advances in metal physics, particularly those in which the electron microscope and related instruments are involved, was organized by B Jouffrey in the Breton town of Perros–Guirec. The French Electron Microscope Society has published the contributions to this school, under Monsieur Jouffrey's editorship, in a handsome, well produced and well illustrated volume.

B J McClelland London: Chapman and Hall 1973 pp xvi + 334 price £4

This book is intended for physical chemists and the stress is on 'working knowledge', with a basis in what the author describes as 'naive statistical theory'. I am uneasy about some details of the statistical argument in chapter 2, particularly the use of Stirling's approximation on values of n_i = 0 or 1 as in the classical gas (chapter 2) and the Fermi gas (Q. 2.1).

D V Morgan (ed) Chichester: J Wiley 1973 pp xv + 486 price £11.75

As so often happens in science there are suggestions in papers written many years ago which, had they been pursued, would have led to an early discovery. Channelling is no exception, as Professor Thompson points out in the introduction to this book.

Amsterdam: Elsevier ScientificVol 3 Island Arcs: Japan and its Environs A Sugimura and S Uyeda 1973 pp viii + 247 price $26.0 Vol 5 Global Tectonics and Earthquake Risk C Lomnitz 1914 pp xiv + 320 price $29.80 Vol 6 Plate Tectonics X Le Pichon, J Francheteau and J Bonnin 1973 pp xii + 300 price $16

In the field of earth science, Plate Tectonics written by Le Pichon, Francheteau and Bonnin is one of the most important books published this century. The theory of plate tectonics has made a revolutionary impact on the earth sciences over the past eight years.

Richard Whitley (ed) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1974 pp ix + 286 price £5.95

During the last 10 or 15 years sociologically oriented writers such as Roe, Kuhn, Ziman, Ravetz and Ben–David have given physicists much instruction and pleasure and some pain. Little of these responses will be elicited by the present volume.

R J Elliott and A F Gibson London: Macmillan 1974 pp xxi + 490 price £5.95

This book covers many aspects of solid state physics in a comprehensive manner. The presentation is of a particularly high quality and the book is well structured such that the reader may select areas of fundamental or advanced theory, and appropriate applications.

Optics Eugene Hecht and Alfred Zajac Massachussetts: Addison-Wesley 1974 pp viii + 565 price £7.05

The stated objectives of the authors of this volume is to meet 'a compelling need for a new undergraduate text which will speak in the contemporary jargon of picoseconds, megahertz and nanometers ... a text which will embrace the pedagogically valuable classical methods along with the major new developments, techniques and emphasis'.

J H Sandars and S Sleenholm (eds) Oxford: Pergamon Press 1974 Part 1 Three Level Gas Systems and Their Interaction with Radiationpp 106 price £2.95 Part 2 Mode Locking of Laserspp 107–229 price £2.80

Both parts of this volume are valuable. The first is an extensive account of the behaviour of three level systems in the presence of an intense field resonant with one of the transitions.

Friedrich Hund London: Harrap Books 1974 pp 260 price £6.10

This is a blow by blow account of the development of quantum theory from Planck's Ann. Phys. Lpz. 1900 article to Yukawa's in Proc. Phys. Math. Soc. Jap. in 1935.

C A Hooker (ed) Dordrecht: Reidel 1973 pp x + 385 price Dfl 105 (cased) Dfl 56 (paperback)

Why do people trouble themselves with the philosophy of the quantum theory? I find it exceedingly difficult to judge whether the exercise is intended to do more than sharpen our appreciation of its content: one feels that the operators in this domain are also hoping to improve the physical content of the theory.

Jerzy Dobrzycki (ed) Dordrecht: Reidel 1912 pp 367 price Dfl 65

This volume is a collection of 11 papers presented at a symposium, organized by the International Union of the History andPhilosophy of Science and held in Toruri, Poland during 1973, to mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicolas Copernicus. The majority of the papers in this volume are concerned with the effect that Copernicus' theory had on scientific developments in centres of learning all over the world.

C W Kilmister Oxford: Pergamon Press 1973 pp ix + 365 price £2

This book consists of a 92 page introduction by Professor Kilmister followed byreprints of 11 important original papers on general relativity. The introduction is well done, taking the reader from a starting point in newtonian mechanics, through an outline of the main structure of general relativity, and on to a few remarks about modern developments.

Monthly round-up of new instruments, components and equipment released by industry vendors.

Information about appointments and awards, meetings, and member services from the Institute of Physics.

Late-breaking conference news, calls for papers and general news.