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Vhysics in Canada The Bulletin oj the Canadian Association oj Vhysicists

Vol . 14 N o . 3 A u t u m n 19^8

THE AWARD FOR ACHIEVEMENT IN PHYSICS, 1 9 5 8 .

John Stuart Foster, F.R.S.C., F.R.S. 5

UNFASHIONABLE PHYSICS BY R. H. HAY 7

IN PROFILE: BALFOUR CURRIE WATSON BY FRANK T. DAVIES 15

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The Award for Achievement in Physics, 19^8

JOHN STUART FOSTER, F.R.S.C., F.R.S.

BORN IN NOVA SCOTIA and educated at Acadia University, Professor Foster studied at Yale as a graduate student where he obtained the Ph.D. degree in 1921. A National Research Fellowship then permitted him to continue his work on the Stark Effect at Yale for another three years, after which he went to McGill.

It was during these early years that his experiments revealed patterns in the Stark Effect in helium which are constant for the members of a given series. Shortly thereafter he carried out the related theoretical calculations in Copenhagen under a Fellowship from the International Education Board. Professor Foster's pioneering work in this field is now described in the basic books on atomic physics and on physical spectro-scopy. Failure of the older perturbation theory to explain these experi-ments provided a stimulus to the development of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg. Other prominent theoreticians such as Kramers, Schroe-dinger, Hund and others, also utilized Professor Foster's results at the time because of their fundamental nature. Indeed, the detailed agreement between the experimental results of Foster and the calculations has been described by Heisenberg as the best example of perturbation theory in quantum mechanics.

In recognition of this work he was awarded in 1931 the Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute, elected to the Royal Society of London in 1935 and awarded the Tory Medal of the Royal Society of Canada in 1946.

With the beginning of the war, Professor Foster turned his attention, like so many other physicists, to radar, first at McGill and then at M.I.T. One result of this work was a radar scanner which could follow a Bren gun bullet for more than one mile and whose efficiency was the highest ever achieved by comparable scanners during the war. For this impor-tant contribution, Professor Foster was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the United States in 1947.

Then came the McGill cyclotron, Canada's largest accelerator, and the associated Radiation Laboratory. It was through his persistent efforts, his thoughtful design and thorough planning that this major scientific

6 I'HYSICS IN CANADA

facility came into being. June fourth, 1949, was the historical day when the cyclotron was first p i t into operation after a record of only three hours spent in outgassing. To date, some forty isotopes have been pro-duced, identified, and investigated.

The Canadian Association of Physicists is therefore honoured in awarding its medal to Professor John Stuart Foster, Director of the Radiation Laboratory and Rutherford Research Professor at McGill University, for his service to Physics and to Physics in Canada during the past forty years.

After this citation was read and the medal presented at the Congress in Hamilton, Professor Foster in his remarks made it quite clear that two of his more notable achievements had not been cited, namely his two sons, both prominent ph) sicists. John S. Foster is Associate Director of the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California at Livermore and L. Curtis Foster is Director of the Zenith Radio Research Labora-tory at Redwood City, California.

Unfashionable Physics*

by R. H. HAY

I AM, I BELIEVE, the first person employed in industry—if one does not count A.E.C.L. in this category—to occupy the Presidency of this Association. It is appropriate, therefore, if I try to describe the sort of physics that industrial physicists are likely to do. As my title indicates, it is, for the most part, unfashionable physics in these days of High Energy Accelerators and Nuclear Reactors. Naturally, I can speak only for myself. I propose, therefore, to describe some of the problems which we have met with in the Canadian Aluminium Industry.

Much of our work is routine and unglamorous, but not any easier on that account. I know of no more miserable branch of physics than that involved in experimental determinations of thermal conductivities at elevated temperatures of such things as graphite and carbons, nor is it always easy to make even a moderately precise determination of the electrical conductivity of some of the aluminium samples which we receive for such determinations, and is it physics or is it some kind of magic touch which restores inoperative or mal-functioning electronic gear to order? However, with the routine come problems that are new and different, challenging and difficult enough to solve.

The most interesting of these come to us from the smelters, and while the organization for which I work, Aluminium Laboratories Limited, has, in Canada, two distinct Laboratories, one in Arvida where the main field of study is the smelting process, and one in Kingston, Ontario, where it is problems arising out of the fabrication and utilization of aluminium, we, in Kingston, have devoted a great deal of time and about a fifth of the total manpower of my group to smelting problems. In order that you may have a better appreciation of these problems, I shall describe very briefly what a modern aluminium electrolytic reduction cell looks like and try, by means of two figures, to create a proper picture of a potline in your mind. What I show you and what I tell you is per-fectly general and does not necessarily delineate the type of cell or pot-

* Presidential Address at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Physicists, Hamilton, June 1958.

10 I'HYSICS IN CANADA

line in use in the plants cf the Aluminum Company of Canada, Limited. Throughout the industry improvements in smelting technique are most jealously guarded. The policy of our own affiliate is no exception to this rule.

The production of aluminium from alumina by the Hall-Heroult pro-cess is still very much an art seventy or eighty years after it was first discovered. Figure 1 is a diagrammatic sketch of the first commercial type of cell and one whic h is still used extensively. The cathode consists essentially of a carbonaceous trough set into a steel shell with insulating material between the carbon and the steel. Rods, or bars, of steel em-bedded in the carbon project horizontally out through the sides of the steel shell and are connected to the cathode bus-bar system. These pro-vide a means of leading ihe current from the carbon cathode to the bus. The carbon trough contains molten cryolite in which alumina will dis-solve. So will just abou: everything else! Dipping into the top of the bath are carbon blocks, roughly one foot square in cross-section and perhaps one and one half feet high when new. These are suspended by steel and copper bars torn the anode bus-bars which are suspended horizontally across the cell. The passage of current from these anode

But Bar

H A L L - H É R O U L T

Electrolytic Cell is which aluminum ia produced

F I G U R E 1

blocks through the molten cryolite to the cathode electrolyses the alumina with the release of oxygen essentially, at the anodes, and the deposition of aluminium at the bot tom of the cryolite bath on top of the cathode. There is very little difference in density between the molten cryolite and the aluminium, but it is sufficient to ensure the formation of a metal pool, or pad, in the cathode trough. At periodic intervals the accum-ulated aluminium is syp ioned out of the pot and the anodes, which of

UNFASHIONABLE PHYSICS 9

course are consumed by the reaction between the oxygen and the carbon, are replaced.

In the construction of these aluminium cells that of the cathode assembly is fairly uniform. The cells are distinguished, however, by the type of anode construction. What I have just described is called the prebaked anode cell. There is, however, a self-replenishing type of anode called the Soderberg anode, developed in Norway and used extensively in various electrolytic cells, not just those for the production of alu-minium. It is sketched in Figure 2. It is almost as large in cross-sectional area as is the cathode assembly. A steel shell holds a plastic paste of carbon particles with tarry binders. At elevated temperatures these will

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bake to a hard carbon mass. Since the operating temperature of the cryolite is of the order of 900°C., the bottom of such an electrode will be baked hard while the top, inside the shell, will be a soft paste. As the carbon burns away at the bottom where it is in the electrolyte, fresh paste is added at the top and adjustments are made to the structure so that the carbon, in essence, slides down through the casing as it is burned away.

1 0 I'HYSICS IN CANADA

Current is fed into this type of anode by steel spikes, or studs, which are disposed in one of two ways. Our diagram shows one way, the so-called vertical stud anode. The bus-bar is arranged horizontally above the anode and long steel rods project down into the carbon mass and up past the bus to which they are clamped. Periodically each of these studs is undamped, twisted loose, removed and replanted higher up to allow for the constant downward movement of the whole structure. In the other type of anode the studs are planted at a slight angle in the sides of the anode in rows. Periodically, as the anode moves down the studs in the bottom row are withdrawn and replanted above the top row.

These various types of cells are arranged in series circuits and carry direct current of from 20.000 to 100,000 amperes. The French, in fact, are building a line to carry 150,000 amperes and there is, I believe, one American line rated at 125,000 amperes. Most of the Soderberg lines operate at about 50,000 amperes and use the horizontal stud arrange-ment. The very large cell!!—those operating around 100,000 amperes— use the vertical stud Soderberg anodes. The physical size of these cells is large, the outside dimensions of a typical 100,000 ampere cell being of the order of 14 ft. wide by 32 ft. long with an overall height of some-thing of the order of 12 or 14 ft. In some cases the cathodes are sunk into pits in a concrete floor with the cathode bus-bar in adjacent trenches. In other cases a two-storey construction is used with most of the cathode and the cathode bus assembly just under the ceiling of the basement and the working floor just about flush with the top of the cathode assembly. When I say that a typical 100,000 ampere, Soderberg anode assembly can weigh as much as 60 tons, you will appreciate that these structures are massive and expensive. As I have said, the cells are arranged in a line which doubles back on itself twice to give two rows of pots side by side in each of two side-by-side buildings. In technical jargon the cells in the two buildings constitute a potline. The voltage drop per cell is of the order of five or six volts and the number of cells in a line is adjusted to provide an overall potential difference to suit the direct current power supply which today is usually provided by step-down transformers and mercury vapour rectifiers arranged in multi-phase circuits.

As I have said, the process is largely an art and the cells have grown in size step by step, new designs being extrapolations of past experience. Occasionally, however, tiere is a bold and daring extrapolation such as the French made in going from relatively small cells to those carrying 100,000 amperes. For us this has produced problems in two fields. First, heat balance and the calculation of heat flow, particularly out of the cathode structure but also, to some extent, from the anode structure. The aim is to secure the maximum possible amount of aluminium per kilo-

UNFASHIONABLE PHYSICS 11

watt of power supplied to the cell. Heat must be developed, however, in order to keep the electrolyte at a proper temperature. If the cell dissipates heat at too great a rate, power will be wasted. On the other hand, if the cell is too well insulated, it may be difficult to maintain proper operating temperatures with the proper current for maximum efficiency. Cal-culation of the thermal characteristics of a typical cathode assembly is not easy. It can be done by the use of an analog computer. Mr. J. I. Mead, in my group, has done it by means of an iterative method of matrix calculation. In either case, the thermal conductivity of the carbon, of the insulation and of the steel are physical constants one has to know. It may seem simple to make measurements of typical samples of material to arrive at these. Unfortunately, cryolite penetrates the carbon, gets into the insulation and freezes there, converting the used insulation into something quite different from one's initial sample of new material. Like-wise, carbon impregnated with the cryolite bath has quite different thermal and electrical properties than it had prior to impregnation. We have succeeded in making measurements on samples of new and used lining material. We have also installed thermocouples in operating cells and have used those as crude working calorimeters. From such measure-ments we have made calculations which have led to improvements in cell design and, I hope, potline operation. This has been a fascinating if at times exasperating, field of work.

There is another aspect of the large cells, however. The bus-bar sys-tems and conductors in and around the cell carry currents, as I have said, of the order of 100,000 amperes. This means that there are appre-ciable magnetic fields generated in and around these cells. Consider now this situation: In the cell we have a pool of molten aluminium of variable thickness but which might be a foot thick and will be something like 10 ft. X 25 ft. in area. Above it is a fused salt electrolyte of conductivity so much lower than that of the molten metal pool that the latter can certainly be taken to be an equipotential body. Suspended in the electro-lyte pool is an enormous carbon block out of which flows a current of the order of 100,000 amperes vertically downward through the electro-lyte into the metal pad and out of it into the carbon lining and thence out by way of the horizontal steel bars embedded in the carbon to the cathode bus and on to the anode bus of the next cell. There are bound to be magnetic fields in the region of the molten metal pool. These will be quite complex in their configuration. We thus have a molten metal conductor carrying substantial current and situated in a magnetic field of appreciable strength and some complexity. What happens to the metal pad? Does it hump? Does it circulate en masse? Are there localized circulations? You may ask what would it matter. The effective anode


cathode distance is of the order of only 2 inches. To control this over 30 feet is no small problem. At least as a first premise, one would expect best operation from a quiescent metal pool, a flat surface on the bottom of the electrode and a uniform anode-to-cathode distance. Experience in the operation of aluminium electrolytic potlines seems to bear out the validity of this premise. It is also good for efficient production to keep aluminium out of the oxidizing zones under the anode. Localized cir-culations might well bring metal up from the pad to these zones.

The English have actually measured the magnetic fields that exist in the metal pad region of the cell. They determined the magnitudes by inserting a heavily lagged tube of refractory material down through the bath into the metal and then operating a flip coil inside the tube. The mortality of flip coils was rather high due to the inevitable increase in temperature, but they, nonetheless, secured measurements. Field direc-tion was obtained by a really ingenious device. A tube was loosely filled with thermo-setting plastic powder in which a small permanent magnet was embedded but able to turn. This tube was then inserted into the cell so that the magnet was at the required point of observation in the metal pool. Exposure to he at set the resin and entrapped the little magnet as it had been oriented b) the field. The tube could then be withdrawn and one way or another the orientation of the magnet with respect to its axis ascertained.

The Russians, too, we f nd, have carried out similar work to establish the magnitudes and configurations of magnetic fields which exist in the metal pad region of the cell. We have used models of the cells. For obvious reasons I shall not describe these models in detail. I will say, however, that we have found both the Russian and the English work to be completely in harmony with our own results.

If the current in the molten aluminium were entirely vertical in direc-tion, one would need to pay attention only to the horizontal components of any magnetic field in that region. One could experiment with bus-bar configurations, configuration and disposition of other current-carrying, external members, or with the disposition of steel components relative to the major current-carrying components with the idea of making the horizontal field as symmetric and as low as possible. Forces on the metal pad would thus be minimized and symmetric. Unfortunately, however, there are vertical field components which are difficult to control and there is strong evidence to indicate that current does flow horizontally in the metal pad. This is quite easy to understand when one considers how low the resistivity of the metal is compared to that of the bath and that of the carbon and steel components in the cathode assembly, and

UNFASHIONABLE PHYSICS 1 3

that it may well be that a relatively long path through the molten metal is actually the one of least resistance overall.

This brings me to our most difficult problem. What are the forces on the metal pad due to the interaction of field and current? How will the molten metal behave, what circulations can we expect, what static dis-turbances should we look for in the interface between metal and bath? I confess readily that so far this problem is too difficult for us to solve. I suspect, indeed, that its solution will be more difficult to find than that of some problems which arise in much more fashionable fields of physics. It is also the sort of problem which should appeal to at least some univer-sity research persons.

This brings me to a class of experimental problem on which we should like to see others work. Why is it that the difficult and intricate experi-mental problem of determining accurately the viscosities of liquid helium is tackled in university research laboratories with enthusiasm but nobody seems to be eager to tackle the equally difficult and just as important industrial problem of determining the viscosity of molten aluminium and aluminium alloys? It enters into our magnetic field problem. It also enters into every one of our casting processes, particularly into the newer pro-cesses for continuously casting molten aluminium into ingot and slab. I do wish that at some Canadian university somebody could tackle this problem as Dr. R. J. Donnelly has tackled the liquid helium viscosity problem at the University of Chicago. True, determination of viscosity— except for liquid helium—is unfashionable and in principle has been solved, but that does not put reliable values into handbooks and the chal-lenge of taming molten aluminium, an extremely aggressive and reactive material, and of separating purely metallic effects from effects due to oxide film and surface tension should be enough to satisfy any experi-mentalist.

I should mention, too, the work we are doing in applying well-known physical principles such as the generation of eddy currents and the propagation of ultrasonic wave energy in metals to everyday problems in inspection, in the detection of internal flaws and the improvement of quality.

Another very interesting and fundamental investigation which we have carried on since 1947 has been the determination of hydrogen in aluminium and the development and improvement of methods of deter-mining the hydrogen content of molten metal. The amounts of gas which aluminium can take up are infinitesimal for any but hydrogen. Here, while the amounts are small compared to those for steel or such metals as titanium, they are extremely important, in that excess hydrogen can


give rise to blistering in sheet products, to internal defects in forgings and so forth. If, on the other hand, the hydrogen content of casting alloys is too low, the castings can be unsound due to uncontrolled shrinkage porosity. The leader in this particular field is Dr. C. E. Ransley of the British Aluminium Company Limited, England. I think I can say, how-ever, that Mr. D. J. Neil of our Laboratory is hard on his heels and that the work we have done in Ihis field has solved more than one production problem and has resulted in much better production control of the quality of a wide variety of wrought products.

I have not given you very much detail. What we are doing lacks the glamour and the appeal of either the low energy or the high energy nuclear physics. It is unfashionable, yet it is physics. It is challenging and we do need the help and support and the interest of at least some of our colleagues in the universities, particularly in their teaching and in at least some of the "u iicommitted" research work which goes on in Canada. I do hope that you in the universities will remember us in indus-try and of our need for students well trained in the fundamentals of physics, unfashionable though some may think them to be.

In Profile: Balfour Watson Currie

IN MID AUGUST 1932, four members of the Canadian Second Polar Year Expedition found themselves on the beach at Chesterfield in the north west corner of Hudson's Bay. Actually it would be more correct to say on the rocks rather than on the beach. They rafted a considerable quan-tity of equipment and supplies ashore, including twenty tons of coal in bags, all liberally soaked with sea water.

For a week at least, with the assistance of the few local people includ-ing Eskimos, they moved their own and assisted with all others' supplies up the shingle and rocks above high tide mark and then gradually got them sorted out and stored.

Perhaps the first requirement of an arctic scientist in those days of slow travel by schooner or dogsled was a strong back. Balfour Currie certainly had this qualification in addition to the practical ability to get a varied scientific program going quickly. This program had been based on a team of six scientists, but the drastic economy measures of the period reduced the party to four. We nevertheless decided to tackle the full program and did so, thanks very largely to Balfour Currie. An additional encouragement, also due to economy measures, was that salaries were cut by ten per cent.

We were kept very busy indeed with observations of earth magnetism, earth currents, atmospheric potential gradient, a large program in meteorology and aerology, and, most demanding of all, an extensive program of auroral observations. This included single station photo-graphs, spectroscopic photographs, and height measurements of aurora from two stations some twenty miles apart.

We each had a sleeping bag and found two bed springs and two mattresses which we shared by lot. Currie drew a spring and I a mat-tress. Our sleeping quarters were the attic of a small thinly-constructed hut. We swept the snow off the floor each morning in winter. It never melted, nor did it melt on the living room floor below. It was swept up with the dirt whenever it occurred to us to do the chores.

With all this we nevertheless had a great deal of pleasure in the society of the very small community at Chesterfield. The Eskimos thought us


crazy but were polite about it, and the traders, padres, police, and radio operators welcomed us as additions to their social life. This generally took the form of an occasional game of contract bridge which we intro-duced to Chesterfield.

However, the big event of the week was the Saturday night round-up at the Hudson's Bay Post. First we played a billiards competition in which Lofty Stewart, the iactor, was both scratch man and handicapper. Then we played penny-ante poker in which all accounts were registered for settlement when the sliip arrived the following summer. If Saturday night was clear Balfour Currie and I had to shoot northern lights and so missed the round-up. We could attend only on cloudy nights. If, there-fore, the records of the expedition show a peculiar drop in auroral occurrence on Saturday nights, this must be taken as evidence of the efficacy of prayer.

Throughout this expedition Balfour showed a combination of physical strength, practical ingenuity, and an unusually strong sense of duty, which were then, and always have been, his salient characteristics. He listened more than he talked and when expressing himself would do so gently with a twinkle in his eye.

His parents, of Scots origin, moved from Ontario via Montana, where Balfour was born at Helena in 1904, to a prairie homestead near Nether-hill, Saskatchewan. This was henceforth the family home where Balfour worked on the land durir g his boyhood and vacations from school and university. He continued to do this into his thirties.

He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in Physics in 1925 with high honours. He continued as a demonstrator in physics under Professor E. L. Harrington and took his Master's degree before pro-ceeding to McGill where he obtained his Ph.D.

Except for two years at McGill and the interval of the Canadian Second Polar Year Expedition, Balfour Currie has served the University of Saskatchewan since his; graduation. For nearly thirty years as demon-strator, professor, and then head of the Physics Department, he has devoted all his energy and skill to the education of Saskatchewan students.

He has during this time accomplished a great deal in research, par-ticularly in the field of aurora, but also in other aspects of geophysics including climatology and the structure and electrostatic characteristics of ice crystals. Investigations of problems of interest to the economy of Saskatchewan have also enlisted his ready assistance.

Under his direction the Physics Department of the University of Saskatchewan has become one of the world's most important centres of auroral research. In 1957 this was recognized by the establishment of

IN PROFILE 17

an Institute of Upper Atmospheric Physics by the University of Sas-katchewan and by the appointment of Balfour Currie as its director.

In 1934 Balfour Currie married Elva Washington who, like himself, had a prairie farm childhood and is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan. Two daughters have followed their parents as students of the same university, and it seems likely that their youngest child, a son, will maintain this family tradition.

I have always been impressed by the deep sense of loyalty and affec-tion held by Balfour Currie for his home province of Saskatchewan. His pride in the prairie pioneers, his respect for the civic enthusiasm, and his appreciation of the widespread interest shown by the people of Saskatchewan in their University, must be obvious to his colleagues and his students.

His part in national and international research in geophysics has been recognized by the Royal Society of Canada which elected him a fellow in 1947, by the National Research Council in appointing him chairman of the Associate Committee on Geodesy and Geophysics, and by his colleagues of the Canadian Association of Physicists who have elected him their president for 1958-59.

It is very appropriate that the next annual meeting of C.A.P. will be held on his home campus, the University of Saskatchewan.

FRANK T. DAVIES

The Special Committee for the I.G.Y.

Meeting in Moscow: July 29 to August 9

by D.C. ROSE

THE COMITÉ SPÉCIAL de l'Année Géophysique Internationale (CSAGI) and the Advisory Council for the I.G.Y. (ACIGY) met in Moscow from July 29th to August 9th. The general plan of these meetings is that a sufficient number of delegates are asked to attend to form working groups in each of the fourteen I.G.Y. disciplines. The CSAGI itself is a small committee of representatives from various International Scientific Unions. This committee was formed as a committee of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). The ACIGY is composed of one representative from each country which has formed a national I.G.Y. committee. Most general policy matters are discussed in the ACIGY.

Reports from the data centers for the I.G.Y. indicate that the whole program has been very successful. Most countries have been able to carry out their work as planned, though some countries to whom such scientific work was not normal have run into delays in getting all the planned stations into operation.

The highlights of the whole I.G.Y. program as judged from the meet-ing probably are the many expeditions to Antarctica and the large rocket and satellite program. Neither of those concern the Canadian Committee very much. We have no part in the Antarctic work. In rock-ets we act as hosts to a ] arge United States' program being carried out at Churchill.

The working groups in the fourteen I.G.Y. disciplines, World Days, Meteorology, Geomagnetism, Aurora and Airglow, Ionosphere, Solar Activity, Cosmic Rays, Longitudes and Latitudes, Glaciology, Oceano-graphy, Rockets and Satellites, Seismology, Gravity and Nuclear Radia-tion, met concurrently. Symposia were held as well as meetings of work-ing groups. In the lattei, methods of presenting data and data exchange procedures were discussed rather than scientific results. The holding of concurrent sessions was necessary but the result was that members of a

THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE 1 9

small delegation such as that from Canada would have liked to be several places at once.

The resolutions prepared by the working groups and the ACIGY, after being considered by a resolutions' committee were presented at the final plenary session on Saturday, August 9th and were passed. A short review of some of these and how they may affect the Canadian program might be of interest to Canadian physicists.

The resolution of most importance was probably that which recom-mended the continuation of the I.G.Y. This was introduced in meetings of the ACIGY by the Soviet delegate in a form that recommended the continuation of the I.G.Y. with the present organization and the carrying out of the present program at least until the end of 1959, that is at least one year longer than the present plan which ends the I.G.Y. on Decem-ber 31st, 1958. The reasons for recommending the continuation were that eighteen months of data covering such a wide range of geophysical activity were hardly enough to solve many of the problems involved. This is particularly so in view of the fact that the present period is one of maximum solar activity. Several countries opposed this resolution on the grounds that they had obtained a large portion of their Government support only by making a commitment that the large expenditures would not be continued after the conclusion of the present I.G.Y. program. Other countries favoured continuing it because the international co-operation had produced a great stimulus for geophysical research in areas where little or none had been possible previously. The final resolu-tion was a compromise and is quoted as follows:

The A C I G Y recommends that observational and data-collecting activities in the geophysical and related sciences be conducted during 1959 on the same general plan as in 1 9 5 7 - 5 8 , under the direction of the C S A G I or C U R A G I , as far as practicable and at such level and in such fields as may be determined by each participating Committee. T h e name "International Geophysical Cooperation 1959" is suggested for this period.

CSAGI is the special committee as mentioned above and CURAGI is the Committee for the Utilization of Results of the International Geo-physical Year. Although the above resolution was passed, no move has yet been made to prolong the life of CSAGI which would normally cease to operate on June 30th, 1959, and the coordination office would close on September 2nd, 1959. Since the CSAGI is a committee of the ICSU it remains for the ICSU to organize continued international co-operation when it meets this fall. The Canadian representation on the ICSU is decided by the National Research Council.


Future work in the Antarctic and in Oceanography is already organ-ized on a long term basis by the Special Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the Special Committee on Oceanographic Research (SCOR), both of which are ICSU committees. Canada, of course, would not expect to have any representatives on the Antarctic committee. A résolution was presented at the ACIGY meeting by the United States' delegates, the intent of which was to ask the ICSU to expand SCAR to include Arctic research or to form a new international committee on Arctic research. This was opposed by more than one delegate from countries bordering the Arctic Ocean. It will, however, come up again at a future meeting of ICSU. The situation in the Arctic is completely different from that in the Antarctic where a number of countries are operating scientific stations in areas where there are conflicting terri-torial claims. Our feeling is that the countries bordering the Arctic are capable of expanding geophysical research in that area on their own and there are sufficient means of exchanging data without the necessity of another international committee. The United States' resolution was not accepted by the ACIGY but without any vote being taken.

One of the highlights of the conference was the symposium on the results of rocket and satellite investigations. I attended as many meetings of this as I could but it is difficult to report in any detail on the results. While general impressions can be presented they should not be con-sidered as anything but impressions which might strike other observers differently. There were four days of symposia on rockets and satellites subdivided under the following titles: Satellite Orbit, Miscellaneous Papers, Satellite Tracking, Atmospheric Structure (non-electrical), Atmospheric Structure (Electrical), Satellite Radio Observations and Extra-Terrestrial Radiation Observations. The papers given included both rocket and satellite results and were given by representatives of all nations taking part in such programs. In such a program the United States has the advantage of a long background of very high altitude rocket experiments. This applies particularly in results on Atmospheric Structure and Extra-Terrestrial Radiation. Soviet scientists have, of course, used rockets, particularly in meteorological studies for several years but have not in the past published much information on their work. At the present meeting there was no evidence of any reticence on the part of our Soviet colleagues to withhold scientific data from their satellite investigations. ] heard some criticism of the fact that orbital data on the early satellites were difficult to get. At a previous meeting held last October in Washington on rockets and satellites there was reticence on the part of the Soviet group to give any information about their experiments in advance of the achievement of results. They prob-


ably still follow this policy but at this meeting extensive results of scien-tific measurements were presented and in many cases summaries of the papers were available for the audience. Rightly or wrongly, I got the impression that, though the Soviet had led the world in the size and early firing of satellites the United States groups were more successful in getting a maximum of scientific data from the satellites they have succeeded in launching. This was particularly apparent in that in some cases measurements on the output of data by Soviet satellites was limited to periods when the satellite was over Soviet territory.

The papers presented combined with those already published and those presented at an International Conference on Rockets and Satel-lites held last October are showing how important this work is in getting some knowledge of the interplanetary environment in which the earth moves. The gas density at satellite orbit heights is many times greater than was expected. Some knowledge is gradually being obtained about the composition, state of ionization of the gas and the radiation field which exists at heights up to about 1500 km. This is still only a fraction of the earth's radius and yet what has been learned in the past two or three years is having a profound effect on our knowledge of solar-terrestrial relationship and the exchange of energy between the sun, the earth, and the sky. The latest results of Van Allen's cosmic ray group are particularly interesting. Their objective was to measure cosmic ray intensity changes in satellite orbits but they found their equipment swamped by a particle flux in the range of energies from a few Kev to a few Mev. The latest results from 1958 espsilon show a flux density of particles, possibly electrons, with typical energy of 50 Kev giving a total energy flux of 10 ergs per square centimeter (several thousand times the energy flux usually associated with cosmic rays). This is at a height of 1600 km and the exposure level would be of the order of two roentgens per hour, quite a problem for the space travel enthusiasts. It is not known, of course, how extensive this layer may be.

Regarding the accommodation of scientists in Moscow the delegates were quartered in the Ukrain Hotel, the newest and I believe the largest hotel in Moscow. The hotel is very well equipped and the rooms were excellent. The dining room service and meals can hardly be said to equal the standard of first class hotels in other countries and for those whose rooms were above the tenth floor, elevator service sometimes appeared very inadequate. The "Intourist" organization which looks after foreign visitors operates very efficiently and without it difficulties would be con-siderable because of the language barrier and different customs in hotel and transportation management. Tours by bus were arranged to different parts of Moscow and included such attractions as the Kremlin, and the


Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition. It was the holiday season and the city was crowded, as I expect it is always. There were large numbers of foreign visitors besides those attending our conference. No restrictions whatever were placed on our movements and those who learned to use the palatial Moscow underground "Metro" found it easy to get around. A good map of the city seemed impossible to get though a small map with the main streets and a guide to the "Metro" was presented on regis-tration at the conference. Taxis are available but sometimes in short supply as in any crowded city at rush hours.

The meetings were held at the university about which much has been written and it is truly an impressive collection of buildings. Free buses transported the group frc m the hotel to the university and back and there was plenty of transportation at and around meeting times. The fact that the noontime meal had :o be taken at the hotel rather than at the uni-versity delayed proceedings a little in that the noon break had to be at least two hours.

In the main hall of the university, simultaneous translations into other languages were carried out. The largest meetings were held there. On entering one could get, by depositing the registration badge, a small radio receiver and head phones and on using this could pick up the language one chose anywhere in the hall provided, of course, the speaker spoke into the microphone so that the translators, in sound proof booths near the platform, could hear him. Translation from Russian to English was quite good and presumably from English to Russian was equally good. Most of the papers were in English or Russian with occasionally one in French.

In the smaller meeting rooms, translation had to be done either as the paper was presented by the speaker pausing for the translator to speak or in summary arter the paper. This necessarily delays the rate at which papers can be given but was reasonably satisfactory. Much of the technical translation was done apparently by students in the par-ticular field of work. I understood all the university students are pretty well trained in at least one other language.

A number of the institutes were open for inspection and visits arranged. This applied particularly to those in geophysical research and their I.G.Y. Data Center, Nizmir. It would have been interesting to visit some of their other laboratories, for instance, their high energy accelerator but time was limited and a casual enquiry indicated that such a visit might be difficult to arrange on short notice.

The Canadian delegation consisted of B. W. Currie who is Chairman of the Associate Committee on Geodesy and Geophysics (the Canadian National Committee of the IUGG), T. A. Harwood of the Defence


Research Board's Geophysics Section, D. C. Rose, Chairman of the Canadian National Committee for the I.G.Y. and, therefore, the repre-sentative on the ACIGY, G. W. Rowley, Secretary of the Advisory Committee on Northern Development, Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, and J. T. Wilson of the University of Toronto who is President of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. P. M. Millman of the Upper Atmosphere Research Group at the National Research Council joined the delegation for the last few days of the meetings.

Being in Russia on the invitation of the Soviet Academy of Science seems to smooth the way for visitors. The academy is a very influential organization.

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Subcritical Reactor top view, showing the installa-tion of the vertical ion chamber drive mechanism and the vessel drying system.

TYPICAL EXPERIMENTAL MEASUREMENTS

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Subcritical Reactor showing reactor vessel, source chamber drive mechanism, and counting rate recorders.

flask, horizontal ion

On June 19, 1958 before a distinguished gathering, the Honorable Leslie M. Frost, Premier of Ontario, formally inaugurated at the University of Toronto, Canada's first university-owned Subcritical Reactor, thus creating an important new facility for nuclear education in Canada.

The Subcritical Reactor, located in the University's Wallberg Building, was designed and built by Canadair's Nuclear Division, and will be used as a laboratory training tool for undergraduate students. As such, the facility has been provided with a number of convenient devices to enable the student to grasp the fundamentals' of this new field, and in particular, to illustrate some of the unique aspects associated with Canada's development of heavy water reactors.

In the reactor, natural uranium rods sheathed in aluminum are mounted vertically in a cadmium-covered aluminum vessel. A heavy water moderator surrounds the rods and an external source of neutrons (yielding 108

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Events in the News

1958 International Conference on High Energy Physics at CERN

THE ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on high energy physics was held in 1958 in Geneva under CERN and IUPAP sponsorship in the week of June 30-July 5. This conference represented a translation in spare-time of the annual Rochester conferences which for the past seven years have played a vital role in the development of high energy physics.

In the belief that the volume of effort and number of contributions in this field had made unworkable the traditional method of presentation in which each contributor discussed his own results, the organizers tried this year a radical innovation. The subject matter of the conference was divided into nine parts and each part assigned to a rapporteur who dis-cussed the contributions submitted to him. In this way more time was left for discussion and ths discussion at Geneva proved indeed very stimulating. Success of such a system of presentation depends critically upon the choice of chairmen and rapporteurs. Opinion on the success of the system varied widely but the majority opinion seemed to be that it was promising enough to be tried again.

Rather than summarize the scientific content of five full days into a single paragraph I will present here only a few rather subjective impres-sions. Evidence was presented for the H° and A° particles but the existence of the 500 electi on mass particle first reported by Alikhanian seems not yet to be clearly established. The effective interaction in nuclear /3-decay seems to be clearly established as a vector-axial vector mixture (V-1-2A roughly) and the two-component neutrino theory seems to be valid. Despite a great deal of effort, there seems to be no fundamental theoretical understanding of these facts. In the other weak interaction decays many problems remain: there is for example no plausible explanation of why 7r-mesons do not decay directly into elec-trons and neutrinos.* The powerful dispersion relation techniques have

•According to the Globe and Mail of Sept. 5, 1958, Bernardini and collaborators at CERN have found ir-t decays occurring approximately 10-4 times as often as Jr-n decays, consistent with theoretical predictions.


had much success in pion physics but do not seem able to reconcile our ideas of nucléon structure with the Stanford electron scattering measure-ments. This dilemma may indicate a fundamental limitation in our understanding although other interpretations, none very attractive, are possible. Heisenberg presented a progress report on his unified non-linear theory of the elementary particles. From the discussion it became clear that to the majority, whatever their views on the reasonableness of Heisenberg's general programme, there were serious criticisms of his specific attempt which meant that it could not be taken too seriously.

Those responsible at CERN are to be congratulated on the excellent organization of the conference. For example, each day copies of the complete discussion of the previous day were available to participants and the full proceedings are expected to be available in October. Those attending from Canada were Professors F. Kaempffer, E. Lomon, W. Opechowski, B. W. Sargent and the writer, although other Canadians operating, let us hope temporarily, from foreign bases were to be seen. The 1959 high energy conference is to be held in Moscow.

w . T. SHARP

Congrès International de Physique Nucléaire, Paris

AN IUPAP-SPONSORED international conference on nuclear physics was held in Paris from July 7 to July 12 this year. The organizers adopted a rapporteur system similar to that at the CERN Conference described above. A useful innovation was the advance distribution of copies of the talks of some of the rapporteurs. Unfortunately the large size of the meeting (about 600 registered) and limitations in the electronic arrange-ments discouraged spontaneous discussion. A system of complete simul-taneous translation between the three official languages (French, Russian and English) was in operation and seemed to be useful to many.

The talks of the rapporteurs gave a broad survey of the present state of nuclear physics. The main topics discussed were elastic scattering (of neutrons, heavy charged particles and electrons), nucleon-nucleon scat-tering, direct interaction, heavy ion reactions, photonuclear reactions, the independent particle and collective models and the relations between them, the structure of nuclear matter, and weak interactions. Apart from the very substantial progress in understanding of the interaction of nuclear beta decay, it is not easy to point out specific advances that seem to be of major importance. It is perhaps symptomatic of the in-creasing maturity of nuclear physics that the emphasis is now more on the relationships and connections between the various nuclear models


than on the details of the models themselves. Of particular interest to the present writer in this connection was the talk of Professor A. Bohr in which he described recent attempts from Copenhagen at a more uni-fied view of nuclear models in which energy gap phenomena, analogous to those treated in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of supercon-ductivity, play a central role. Perhaps it is an inevitable consequence of an increasingly mature subject that there seemed to be at Paris less scope for wild ideas and less drama than at the CERN meeting on the fast-moving but poorly understood field of high-energy physics.

Visits to the nearby laboratories of Saclay and Orsay gave impressive evidence of the present slate of nuclear physics in France. The rather leisurely pace of the Paris meeting gave many fruitful opportunities for private discussions. The meeting will be remembered also for its social events. It would not be easy for organizers of a similar meeting in Canada to match the official reception held in the public galleries of the Louvre or the informal gastrononucal feast at St. Germain-en-Laye.

It seems a little curious that although Canada is surely rather better known for its contribution to nuclear than to high-energy physics, there were at the Paris conference only two from Canada, Professor G. M. Griffiths and the writer.

w . T. SHARP

A.P.S. Summer Meeting at U.B.C.

NEARLY 400 PHYSICISTS attended the 1958 Summer Meeting in the West of the American Physical Society, which was held at the University of British Columbia on Au;*ust 26, 27, 28. Among the invited speakers several came from overseas: Garlick, Thompson and Wilkinson from the U.K., Fleischmann from Germany. As a detailed programme of the Meeting is available, as usual, in the Bulletin of the A.P.S., there is no point in summarizing it here again. It is worth emphasizing, however, that the programme was decidedly biased in favour of low energy nuclear physics, magnetic resonance physics and low temperature physics. This had of course something to do with the fact that the main activity of the U.B.C. Physics Department is concentrated just on these fields of re-search, at least so far as "pure" physics is concerned. The last qualifica-tion is necessary as geophysics and oceanography were also well represented on the programme, as they are in the Department. In fact, even a special cruise on Iwo oceanographic vessels was arranged for the participants in the Meeting. Separate mention should be made of Pro-fessor Wilkinson's after-dinner speech entitled "Conferencemanship and the Scientific Understanding" at the Banquet. Not only was the speech


witty and highly entertaining; but it constituted a brilliant survey of some aspects of the pathology of scientific meetings, a topic rarely dis-cussed on such occasions.

w . OPECHOWSKI

AECL's New Tandem Van de Graaff Accelerator

THE FIRST TANDEM Van de Graaff accelerator has been recently operated successfully as an experimental instrument. The machine was designed and built for Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited, by the High Voltage Engineering Corporation, Burlington, Massachusetts. A series of experi-ments designed to test its operating characteristics were conducted at Burlington jointly by physicists from Chalk River (E. Almqvist, D. A. Bromley, A. J. Ferguson, H. E. Gove, J. A. Kuehner and A. E. Lither-land) and physicists from High Voltage Engineering Corporation (R. P. Bastide, N. Brooks, R. J. Connor and P. H. Rose). The accelerator, operating in the proton energy range from 1.8 to 10.5 Mev, delivered well collimated proton beams in excess of 0.5 microamperes in a stable and reproducible fashion. The tandem accelerator, which represents a new departure in Van de Graaff design, has recently been described (J. L. Danforth, Canadian Electronics Engineering 2, 18 (1958)) . The experiments involved the measurement of three new (pn) thresholds, p3 1(pn) at 6.417 ± 0.020 Mev, Ni80(pn) at 7.028 ± 0.020 Mev and Nios at 9.46 ± 0.07 Mev. In order to calibrate the energy scale of the machine above 6 Mev where no accurate energy measurements had previously been made, oxygen gas was supplied to the negative ion source. When the negative oxygen ions were passed through the stripping canal in the high voltage terminal a number of charge states of oxygen are produced, li, in particular, the charge 4 + and 5 + states are selected it is possible to obtain calibrations near 14.57 and 9.33 Mev equivalent proton energies respectively by employing the H-(O10,n)F17 reaction. The neutron threshold for the related reaction O i a(d,n)F1 7 is known quite accurately. The results were presented in a post-deadline paper at the recent Vancouver A.P.S. meeting and are being submitted to Physical Review Letters. The accelerator is presently being shipped to Chalk River and should be in operation again there by the end of the year.

People in the News

THE DEFENCE RESEARCH TELECOMMUNICATIONS ESTABLISHMENT h a s taken over from the builders a new building at Prince Albert, Saskatche-wan, which will house the Prince Albert Radar Laboratory (PARL). The radar which is now being installed will be one of the very largest and most powerful in existence, and has an 84-foot diameter parabolic antenna. It will be used for research on aurora, echoes from the moon and other satellites, and similar problems. From September 3 to 8, DRTE held a conference on high altitude rocket research at Shirley Bay, Ottawa, which was attended by a number of physicists from univer-sities across Canada, as well as NRC and other laboratories. The confer-ence is expected to come up with some suggestions for a high altitude research program which could be implemented in Canada.

D R . RAY MONTALBETTI has left Saskatoon and returned to Churchill to take charge of the Defence Research Northern Laboratory, which con-tinues to be preoccupied with the IGY and rocket research with no let-up in sight if the rumours of extending IGY co-operation are confirmed.

DR. GEORGE C. REID has gone to the Geophysics Institute at the University of Alaska for a year to carry on research on absorption in the ionosphere of radio noise from the galaxy. DR. L. R . O W E N STOREY also has left DRTE for a year at the Central Radio Propagation Labora-tory in Boulder, Colorado, to carry on research on "whistlers" and the "dawn chorus."

At the University of Western Ontario, the Department of Geophysics was officially inauguratec on July 1 as an entity separate from both Physics and Geology. During the previous year, as an interim measure, there had been a Geophysics sub-department of the Department of Geology. The head of die new department is D R . BOB U F F E N and he is assisted by D R . ALAN BECK as Assistant Professor. Dr. Beck was an N.R.C. postdoctoral research fellow during 1957-58, working at UWO.

In the UWO Physics Department itself there have been several staff changes. DR. R. C. DEARLE, who as head of the department nurtured it from its earliest beginnings and through the trying wartime period, and who became research professor in 1949, retired from the latter appointment and from the University on June 30th, 1958. A farewell


reception was held in his honour attended by the Physics Department staff and graduate students, other faculty members and University offi-cials and old friends and colleagues from across the country. Presenta-tions to Dr. Dearie included the naming of the Radio Physics Gold Medal at Western in his honour and a life membership in C.A.P.

DR. D. R. HAY joined the staff of the Department from the Defence Research Board, Ottawa. Hay is a Western alumnus (B.Sc., M.Sc.) and took his Ph.D. at McGill. He will be continuing with his work on the physical structure of the troposphere as it affects U.H.F. transmission. J. A. FULFORD who hopes to get his Ph.D. shortly is now a full time member of the Physics Department staff. He was a part time instructor during 1957-58. T. W. W. STEWART (B.SC. , M.Sc., UWO) has just returned from University College, London, and is taking up an appoint-ment as research associate.

R. W. NICHOLLS has been promoted to full professor and is spending the latter part of the summer in California as a consultant with the Lock-heed Aircraft Corporation. During his time there he will also be asso-ciated with Stanford University. D R . RICHARD STEVENSON has been awarded a contract by the United States Office of Naval Research for the study of properties of solids in high magnetic fields. It is believed that this is the first O.N.R. contract in Canada.

PROFESSOR A. D . MISENER and D R . A. E. BECK are collaborating in writing a chapter in the new book entitled Methods and Techniques in Pure Geophysics (éd., K. S. Runcorn). The chapter deals with the measurement of heat flow over land.

M R . J. M . ROBSON, F.R.S.C., of A.E.C.L. visited Dalhousie Univer-sity in August and gave a short series of talks on our knowledge of [i-decay, his work on neutron decay and the new results regarding time reversal invariance in neutron decay.

D R . P. A. FORSYTH joined the staff of the Institute of Upper Atmos-pheric Physics, University of Saskatchewan, on May 1, and has been appointed a Professor of Physics.

PROFESSOR B. W . CURRIE attended the Fifth Conference of the Scien-tific Council on the International Geophysical Year, held in Moscow from July 30 to August 9. Others representing Canada were DR. D. C. ROSE, N.R.C. (chief delegate); D R . T. J. WILSON, Department of Geo-physics, Toronto; D R . P . MILLMAN, N.R.C.; M R . T. HARWOOD, DRB; and COLONEL G. ROWLEY, Northern Affairs.

D R . L. KATZ attended the Second International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, September 1-13, at Geneva. He pre-sented an invited paper on Photofission in Heavy Elements, prepared jointly by himself, A. P. Baerg and F. Brown of A.E.C.L.


The following new appointments have been made in the Department of Physics at the University of British Columbia: as instructors, NORMAN

BARTON, B.A., M.A. (U.B.C.), PETER RASTALL, B.SC., Ph.D. (Man-chester), JAMES SAVAGE, B . S . (Arizona), Ph.D. (Cal. Inst. Tech.), K . N . R . TAYLOR, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D. (Birmingham).

J . C. GILES, B.Sc. (Sheffield), Ph.D. (Exeter), is coming to U.B.C. as an N.R.C. Post-doctorate Fellow, K E N J I SINNO, M . A . (Tokyo), as a Research Associate, and J . M. ROCARD, Lic.es.Sc., D.Sc. (Paris), as a Post-doctorate Fellow.

Le directeur du Département de Physique de l'Université Laval, le D R H.-P. KOENIG, a fait un séjour de six semaines à Paris au cours de l'été, pour suivre les cours de physique de l'état solide organisés par la Ford Foundation.

Le D R CLAUDE GEOFFRION est revenu récemment de New York, où il a séjourné plus d'un an à titre de boursier Guggenheim: il y a fait des travaux sur la spectroscop e bêta sous la direction de madame Wu, à l'Université Columbia.

Le D R GUY LANSRAUX, profitant d'un voyage outre-mer, a visité un très grand nombre de laboratoires d'universités et de compagnies, s'intéressant aux travaux d'optique, dont il est un spécialiste.

Le D R LAURIE GAUVIN qui, comme les précédents, est professeur au Département de Physique de l'Université Laval, a passé l'été à Chalk River.

Deux physiciens de la région de Québec se sont classés parmi les gagnants du Concours littéraire et scientifique de la Province de Québec pour 1 9 5 7 : le D R FERNAND CLAISSE, du Ministère des Mines de la Province de Québec, a remporté le premier prix de $ 8 0 0 . avec un travail intitulé: Diffusion électrolytique de l'oxygène dans le titane, alors que le D R GUY GIROUX, de CARDE, à Valcartier, remportait le troisième prix de $ 2 0 0 . Le Dr Claisse et le Dr Giroux sont tous les deux des gradués de l'Université Laval.

The University of Manitoba has enlarged its Physics Department with the addition of D R . IAN COOKE, a recent Ph.D. from Birmingham Uni-versity where he worked in solid state physics, and D R . C. DAHLSTROM,

D.R.B., Ottawa. D R . K . I. ROULSTON, on leave for 1 9 5 7 - 5 8 in Cali-fornia, is returning to the Department and D R K . STANDING is away on a sabbatical year studying high energy physics at Bristol. D R . CONNOR

is expecting to receive in the near future a Seigbahn-Slatis beta-ray spec-trometer which will improve the existing facilities of the University for gamma and beta ray spectroscopy-

The Department of Physics at Queen's University announces the fol-lowing changes in staff. DR. G. N. WHYTE, graduate of Queen's and Princeton Universities, has left the X-Rays and Nuclear Radiations


Section of the National Research Council to accept an Associate Pro-fessorship. He will teach radiation and reactor physics in the new graduate course in nuclear engineering. M R . H. L . ARMSTRONG, M.SC.

(Queen's) 1951, has relinguished his position with Pacific Semiconduc-tors Inc. (California) in favour of an Assistant Professorship. DR. P. A. PUHACH, graduate of Alberta and McGill Universités, has left Queen's University in order to work at the University of Gôttingen under an N.R.C. Postdoctoral Fellowship.

D R . D . A. L. PAUL of the staff of the Royal Military College, Kingston, received his Ph.D. degree at Queen's University in May. His thesis was on the annihilation of positrons in inert liquids.

M R . W . R . FRISKEN, who completed his work for the M.Sc. degree at Queen's in 1957, has been awarded an Exhibition of 1851 Scholarship for continuing work at the University of Birmingham.

Recent arrivals at the Chalk River Project of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited include O . R. FRISCH, Jacksonian Professor of Nuclear Physics at Cambridge University, who spent several weeks during August with the Physics Division; and PROFESSOR WILLIAM COCHRAN of Cam-bridge University, who will spend approximately a year with the Neutron Diffraction Section. Also joining the staff of the Neutron Diffraction Section is D R . A. D . B . WOODS from the University of Toronto.

Obituaries

LUCIEN GRÉGOIRE

Lucien Grégoire est mort de cancer du poumon, le 21 mai dernier après quelques mois de maladie. Il avait été conseiller de l'A.C.P. pour la province de Québec de 1952 à 1954 et avait fait partie du comité local d'organisation du congrès de Montréal de l'A.C.P. en 1953.

Né le 17 septembre, 1919, il obtient de l'Université de Montréal les grades suivants: Baccalauréat ès Arts, Licence ès Sciences Mathé-matiques, Licence ès Sciences physiques, maîtrise ès Sciences physiques; au moment de sa mort, il terminait les travaux qui lui auraient donné un Doctorat ès Sciences. Il avait déjà à son crédit une bonne demi-douzaine de communications, tant au congrès de l'Association Cana-dienne-Française pour l'Avancement des Sciences qu'au congrès International de Spectroscopic de 1957-

En 1945, il a épousé Monique Girouard, elle-même Maître ès Sciences physiologiques de l'Université de Montréal; ils ont eu deux garçons. Il a enseigné 10 ans à l'Université de Montréal. En 1953 il était devenu professeur associé de physique au Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean.


Lucien Grégoire était avantageusement connu pour sa franche cor-dialité, son souci de la perfection et son sens critique inné des phé-nomènes physiques.

H. G. I. WATSON

Professor Horace Watson of McGill's Physics Department was drowned on August 17 when a sudden squall capsized his ketch on Lake St. Louis. A graduate of the University of Toronto, he had been at McGill for over 25 years, where he had acquired legendary repute for his prodigious work in the developing and the teaching of the courses and laboratories in electricity and magnetism. He was also well known as one of the early workers in exploration geophysics.

His 6 foot, 300-lb. frame, his booming voice and ready chuckle have long been a part of the McGill scene and will be greatly missed by the many friends among his students and colleagues.

J . K. ROBERTSON

Canadian physicists will have noted with sadness the death of John Kellock Robertson on June 24 in London. At the time of his death he was Professor Emeritus of Physics at Queen's, and he had been asso-ciated with that University for 50 years. An article, "In Retrospect," on Professor Robertson will be appearing in an early issue.

ERNEST O. LAWRENCE

THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE Professor Lawrence was a scientist of great merit and influence. His enthusiasm, vision and courage were demonstrated very early in the invention of the cyclotron for which he received the Nobel Prize. These qualities were also essential to the historical develop-ments in nuclear physics and the University of California at Berkeley, Los Alamos and Livermore during the war and later.

A truly great man of rare and generous judgment, he opened up opportunities for man) famous American scientists yet still remained the best judge of high scientific adventures. In the hearts and minds of physicists the world over Ernest Lawrence cannot be replaced. He will be missed no less in the scientific councils of the West.

Honours and awards in great number came to Professor Lawrence. These included an early award of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society and an honorary D.Sc. from McGill University. The latter was awarded at a special Convocation when McGill's Radiation Laboratory was opened.

C.A.P. Affairs

The 1958 Annual Congress and the Press

THE CONGRESS AT MCMASTER in June upheld the high standards set in previous years for interesting sessions and for local hospitality. It was distinguished in addition this year by having perhaps the most extensive press coverage ever. While one of the main drawing cards for members of the press was the Monday afternoon Symposium on "Science and Communication", substantially the entire meeting was covered by re-porters from the Hamilton Spectator, and the four Toronto papers, the Globe and Mail, the Telegram, the Star, and the Financial Post. There resulted in these papers more than twenty articles, two of which were taken up by the Canadian Press.

Was the coverage good? Did it violate the integrity of the C.A.P. and its members? Perhaps the best thing to do is quote at random (more or less) from the articles and headings.

A youthful Canadian scientist has evolved one of the most daring theories of creation. . . . Californium 2 5 4 . . . was the element . . . that finally exploded the star. . . . . . . A D . Misener . . . left no doubt the scientist was anxious to present an intelligent, human picture of himself and his work. . . . all [papers] were couched in scientific jargon. . . . Telegram editor B. T. Richardson said that science had proceeded too far, too fast, for the public or its servants in the mass media to keep up. . . . Leonard Bertin, science editor of the Financial Post, exhorted scientists to talk in plain English. . . . T o o many science papers were . . . so self-effacing that the reader often felt a page was missing. . . . [the speaker] said . . . that first and second year Physics "are all garbage [J/C]". . . . SCIENTISTS T A L K S R A N G E OVER A T O M S , M E D I C I N E A L L W O R L D MILLIONS H A V E "H" F A L L - O U T IN B O D I E S -S A V A N T S Canadian Physicists were told today that their talents were needed urgently in the "unfashionable physics" of Canadian industry. . . . R E S E A R C H F U N D S BOOSTED, PHYSICISTS PRAISE S P U T N I K . . . . . . . Dr. Steacie felt physicists should stay in their "ivory towers". . . .


Dr. Lou Voyvodic . . . said industry as a whole was not pulling its weight in financing research. . . . The heart of the Maser system is a crystal which when "tickled" by a micro-wave of a certain frequency . . . converts the energy stored in its atomic system into a stronger signal.

There was a distinct correlation between the accuracy and balance of articles and the time devoted by C.A.P. members to talking informally with reporters about the subject involved. For example, on the morning of the Maser session two reporters drove from the hotel to McMaster with some C.A.P. members. One of these gave a simple and accurate description of the operating principles of Masers and their useful appli-cations. This stimulated the reporters' interest to the extent that they not only attended the session but talked at length afterwards to the chairman and speakers participating in the symposium. The result was at least one article which may even have been too technical for the average newspaper reader. And this was written, not by a man trained in science reporting, but one who normally reports on political affairs!

If nothing else, the contacts established between reporters and scien-tists helped each to appreciate a little better the problems of the other. In addition, perhaps the work of physicists in Canada is a little better understood by the public—or that portion of it in Southern Ontario since national coverage was disappointingly small. Professors A. D. Misener of Western, chairman of the Committee for Press Relations for the Congress, and J. S. Marshall of McGill, chairman of the C.A.P. Committee for Public Relations, deserve considerable credit for their efforts.

Committee oil Secondary School Physics Teaching

A COMMITTEE has been established to study ways in which the C.A.P. could contribute to the improvement of Secondary School Physics teach-ing in Canada. The members of the committee are Dr. J. S. Fraser, A.E.C.L., Chairman; Prof. C. M. Carmichael, University of Western Ontario; Dr. R. L. Clarke, A.E.C.L.; and Prof. C. Fremont, Laval University. A representative from each province (except Prince Edward Island) has been appointed to furnish information on physics curricula, enrolment, scholarships, teacher training and qualifications, etc. from which it is hoped an appraisal of physics teaching in Canada can be made.

The committee arranged for Mr. James MacLachlan, a science teacher at Earl Haig Collegiate Institute, North York, Ontario, to work with the Physical Scie nces Study Committee in Watertown, Massachu-

C.A.P. AFFAIRS 3 7

setts. It is hoped that his visit will enable the members of the C.A.P. to gain some insight into the philosophy and methods of a promising development in physics teaching.

Progress Report on the High Energy Project

THE SUMMER ISSUE described the Committee set up to study an organiza-tion suitable for a National High Energy Laboratory and related matters. Members of this Committee visited a number of American laboratories including Brookhaven, MURA, the Argonne, Columbia, M.I.T., Har-vard, et cetera, and some potential Laboratory sites in Canada. The Committee, together with the Technical Panel and a number of other C.A.P. members, held a meeting (in Hamilton at the time of the Con-gress) with several eminent American physicists active in the accelerator field to discuss recent technical developments, particularly in connection with strong focussing.

The Committee prepared a report, including a re-written brief to the Government, which was discussed at an all-day meeting of the Executive held in Ottawa on August 25th. Excellent as the report was, the dis-cussion produced a few changes and the brief with its supporting data is being reprinted at present. The Executive also appointed a delegation to present the brief to the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and the President of C.A.P. is seeking an appointment with Mr. Churchill early this fall. The delegation will consist of the President and Secretary of C.A.P., the members of the Technical Panel (Drs. Katz, Lorrain, and Volkoff), and Drs. Hay, Kerwin, Preston, and Sargent.

T.P. Division: Eastern Regional Meeting

THIS ANNUAL MEETING will take place at Queen's University, Kingston on Nov. 15. Prof. P. Morrison of Cornell University will be the guest of the Division. As usual a series of papers on their recent investigations will be given by the members.

Books

Excited States in Biology and Chemistry. By C. REID. Butterworths Scientific Publications, London. 1957. Pp. 215. $7.50.

IN THIS BOOK the author makes an admirable attempt to explain the mechanisms of some of the more complex biological reactions in terms of quantum mechani-cally permissible intermediate states. The fundamental problem of inter- and intramolecular energy trarsfer processes leading to the formation of these short-lived excited intermediates is the main theme recurring throughout the whole book. After a general discussion of the basic principles of quantum chemistry, a wide range of topics—such as photosynthesis, biological oxidations, luminescence, the chemistry of vision, the ef:ects of high-energy radiation and the role of oxygen in all these reactions—are pr;sented. At the end of the book a sketchy outline of the mathematical apparatus used in quantum mechanics is included. (The usefulness of this section is questionable in view of its brevity).

On the whole the book is easily readable, and most of the topics are presented in a simplified (if not, occasionally, in an oversimplified) and descriptive manner. A great amount of information is packed within its modest size, and most of the topics are well documented with references dating as late as 1956. This book will, no doubt, find deservedly its place in any biology, chemistry or physics library. Biologists and chemists will find it a useful starting point in becoming "quantum mechanically" orientated, and physicists may find in it sufficient inspiration to direct their efforts towards an understanding of some of the most challenging biological reactions in terms of clearly defined physico-chemical concepts.

A . H . SEHON McGill University

The Spectrum of Atomic Hydrogen. By G. W. SERIES. Oxford University Press. 1957. Pp. 88. $2.00.

THE OXFORD LIBRARY of the Physical Sciences was inaugurated by the late Sir Francis Simon with the aim of giving brief descriptions of various fields in the forefront of research in physics. The present book owes its existence to a specific suggestion, by Sir Francis Simon, to the author, who has been engaged for several years in research in various aspects of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen. The result is a very readable account of the history of the investigation of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen as well as a concise treatment of the most recent work on Lamb shifts, hyperfine structure and positronium. A clear description is given of the conditions under which the spectrum of atomic hydrogen is produced, including atomic beam techniques for the study of the Lamb shift and hyperfine structure At the same time the author has taken great pains in giving a physical picture of the various theoretical arguments of quantum electrodynamics which lead to the existence of the Lamb s lift as well as the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the anomalies in the hyperfine structure. Particular stress is laid by the author (and rightly so) on the importance of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen in the development of the subject of quantum theory.

BOOKS 3 9

The presentation is lucid and lively and conveys some of the excitement of the physicists who contributed to the development of the subject. The book is easy to read and can be strongly recommended to anyone interested in modern atomic theory. To the spectroscopist it gives an invaluable summary of the present status of the study of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen.

G . HERZBERG National Research Council

Dislocations and Mechanical Properties of Crystals. Edited by J. C. FISHER, E. G. JOHNSTON, R. THOMSON and T. VREELAND, Jr. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pp. 634. $15.00.

THIS BOOK CONTAINS papers presented at an International Conference at Lake Placid in September 1956, together with admirably clear summaries of discussions. The Conference was attended by many of the foremost authorities and these Proceedings enable one to find out what was known up to that time.

Almost the whole field of dislocations is covered, under the following sections: Direct Observation of Dislocations; Deformation of Pure Single Crystals; Work Hardening and Recovery; Alloy Crystals, Impurities, Yield Point Phenomena; Dislocation Damping and Fatigue; Theory of Dislocations; Whiskers and Thin Crystals; Radiation Damage. The book should then be of interest to all graduate students and research workers who have to deal with dislocations.

There is space here only for a brief description of the first section, which Dr. Fisher describes as "perhaps the most striking contribution to the conference". This was indeed the first conference at which there was a full discussion of the direct observation of dislocations.

The precipitation of impurities on the dislocation lines was used by Amelinckx and Maenhout-van der Vorst, by Mitchell, and by Dash. This technique enables one to observe directly the three dimensional networks of dislocations (e.g., Dash's beautiful picture of a Frank-Read source). Etching techniques, which give directly only the surface distribution of dislocations, were used by Gilman and Johnston, by Machlin and by Suzuki. A conclusion of Gilman and Johnston (which led to some discussion) was that dislocations may be created under stresses three orders of magnitude lower than predicted by theory. Electron microscopy was used by Hirsch, Home and Whelan, who observed both stationary and moving dislocations in aluminum foil.

The printing and binding are excellent, except that the photographs have too coarse a mesh and consequent loss of detail. It is a pity that in a field developing so rapidly it has taken over a year for these proceedings to appear.

T . H . K. BARRON Z. S. BASINSKI

National Research Council

Science Theory and Man. By ERWIN SCHRÔDINGER. Dover Publications, Inc. Pp. 223. $1.50.

THIS BOOK, formerly published under the title, Science and the Human Tempera-ment, is a collection of nine essays including 'The Fundamental Idea of Wave Mechanics," the Nobel Address delivered by Schroedinger at Stockholm on December 12, 1933. The last essay, "What is an Elementary Particle?" appeared in Endeavour. There is a biographical introduction by the translator, James Murphy, and a most sympathetic preface by Lord Rutherford, who wrote "many in this country, whether they agree with the author or not, will read these charm-ing and simply written essays with pleasure and interest."

In the more than twenty years since Schroedinger wrote, much has been dis-covered about the physical world, but some of the metaphysical topics he treats


have a continuing lively interest for students of modern physics. It is fortunate therefore that these essays have been made accessible to students at a modest price. Some of the analogie; used by Schroedinger are really helpful and should be widely known to teachers of the subject.

But not all of these essays are inspired. Literary fancy rubs shoulders with philosophical allusion and psychological speculation and on occasion the writing is sententious. At his bes: Schroedinger is penetratingly clear. Every young theoretical physicist should read, mark and inwardly digest pp. 204-5 where he discusses "picturing the physical world as a reality" and then reread the fourth essay, "Is Science a Fashion of the Times?" The Nobel Address is of course a masterpiece. It shows that v e need not follow the custom (only too widely spread among elementary text boolts on atomic physics) of really ignoring the substance of Schroedinger's famous paper presenting his equation for the first time. It is possible to present Schroedinger's idea of wave mechanics in relation to classical mechanics in simple physicitl terms.

W . H . WATSON University of Toronto

Safety Techniques for Radioactive Tracers. By J. C. BOURSNELL. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 67. $1.30.

THIS BOOK sells very cheaply, but is useful only to the rankest neophyte—one who has never done any work at all with radioactive tracers.

The book gives a very elementary discussion of the health hazards involved due to external radiation and personal contamination. It deals with radioactive waste disposal problems, laboratory administration and responsibility. In a section of nine Appendices are listed items such as the relative toxicity of various isotopes, protective equipment, temp arary preservation of radioactive animal carcasses, etc. and some of these data, al hough all available elsewhere, are certainly useful.

The book correctly distinguishes between "hot" and "cold" laboratories but, in the description of equipment, techniques, laboratory design, does not differentiate at all. The book also contains quite a few "localisms." For example, in the use of film badges, it is suggested that one "must expose the pink paper wrapping out-wards to the radiation." This is obviously a reference to one particular type of film used in the United Kingdom. Appendix VI dealing with pipettes falls into the same category. Actually, one do'is not have to do any work with radioactive materials to be well aware of the fact that any number of very adequate syringe-type pipettes are readily available.

The flyleaf calls this an "invaluable primer." Primer it certainly is, invaluable it is not.

L. YAFFE McGill University

Dictionary of Physics. Compiled and edited by H. J. GRAY. Longmans, Green and Co. Pp. 544. $15.10.

THIS REVIEWER finds it dilficult to understand the motivations which lead to the compilation of scientific dictionaries of this sort. It is hard to see who is going to get fifteen dollars' worth of useful information out of a compendium of physical terminology.

In any case, there are rather striking gaps in the most active modern fields of physics. The nuclear physicist will look in vain for channel spin, Breit-Wigner formula, shell model, col ective model, Clebsch-Gordon coefficients or the Lee-Yang neutrino. The solid state physicist will find no reference to effective mass, negative temperature, cyclotron resonance, maser, or magnetic resonance. The high-energy physicist will be startled by the discovery that the fundamental par-

BOOKS 4 1

tides are electron, positron, proton, neutron, neutrino and meson (pi and mu) . There is no reference to K-mesons, 2 , A or S particles. Dispersion relations are not mentioned. Nor will the field theorist find renormalization, the Lamb-Retherford effect or Feynman diagrams. This list of omissions could be multiplied many times. With respect to various technical trivia the coverage seems much more complete.

P . R . WALLACE

Relaxation Methods in Theoretical Physics, Volume II. By R. V. SOUTHWELL. Oxford University Press. 1956. Pp. 274. $8.25.

IN THIS SECOND VOLUME on Relaxation Methods in Theoretical Physics, Professor Southwell completes a three-volume work which he began with the publication, in 1940, of Relaxation Methods in Engineering Science. In this series, the author has collected a wide variety of examples which amply illustrate both the power of relaxation methods and the writer's skill in reducing physical problems to problems in computation.

To the applied mathematician and the theoretical physicist, as well as to the engineer, perhaps the most significant feature of relaxation methods is that they allow one to find practical solutions to differential equations when the boundaries are not simple geometrical curves. In this final volume, Professor Southwell has given numerous examples illustrating the application of these methods to: ( i) solve the biharmonic equation; (ii) determine stresses in elastic solids of revolu-tion; (iii) treat eigenvalue problems in mechanics, electro-dynamics, and elasticity; (iv) solve non-linear problems in elasticity, hydrodynamics, and plasticity.

The application of relaxation methods to determine the steady flow of a viscous liquid past a fixed circular cylinder is of particular interest to the reviewer who once spent considerable time in an attempt to improve the standard approxima-tions of Stokes and Oseen to the solution of this problem. In particular, the detailed results for a range of Reynolds' numbers is of more than passing interest, in view of the work necessary to solve one case by means of the iterative scheme proposed by Thom.

It is perhaps disappointing to find so little space devoted to parabolic and hyperbolic differential equations. However, adequate references are given to papers dealing with these matters, as well as to work on problems involving three inde-pendent variables.

In his three volumes on relaxation methods, Professor Southwell has collected together material which will long continue to provide a source of inspiration to those who seek practical solutions to vexing problems in applied mathematics.

B. A . GRIFFITH University of Toronto

Magnetic Amplifiers. By G. M. ETTINGER. Methuen Monographs. Pp. 102. $2.00.

UNTIL ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO, electronics was almost synonymous with vacuum tubes and their associated circuits. Recently it has become evident that future advances in electronic techniques will be associated with hitherto unknown or neglected physical properties. For example, the transistor, only ten years old, has established itself firmly in the realm of electronic engineering.

With these thoughts in mind, one would expect a book, published only a year ago with such a comprehensive title as Magnetic Amplifiers, to be full of essen-tially new material. It is disappointing to find that it deals principally with the saturable reactor. Many saturable reactor circuits are considered, but all seem to be mere variations on a few themes. Stability, feedback, and time-lag are con-sidered, with examples of bi-stable switching circuits. Mathematics is used spar-ingly, and is simple almost to the point of triviality; little attempt is made to


draw comparisons between magnetic amplifiers and conventional vacuum tube amplifiers.

A section towards the e i d of the book is devoted to more modern develop-ments (i.e., ferrites). It is disappointing to see the superficiality with which this section is written. For instance, the chapter on ferrite elements for digital com-puters is such that it is almost incomprehensible to someone who knows nothing about computer techniques, yet is almost trivial to one who is familiar with the subject.

Of superconducting circuit elements, the cryotron is mentioned in only six lines. In conclusion, this book gives a qualitative outline of basic saturable reactor

circuits. Its treatment of nore modern developments is essentially superficial. Its value to the research worker is barely more than to remind him that such things exist. It does not se;m to come up to the standard which one expects of Methuen's Monographs.

J. M . DANIELS University of British Columbia

Nuclear Reactors for Research. By CLIFFORD R. BECK. D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc. Pp. 267. $9.25.

A CONCISE SUMMARY of the: vast amount of information presented at the Geneva Conference is the purpose of the Geneva Series on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. This volume, covering research reactors, is one of six in the series. Dr. Beck has performed an admirable task in gathering from the fifteen volumes of technical information signficant quantities of facts and figures on the world's numerous research reactor.':. This information is presented in Part II of the book under broad headings defining the reactor type. One chapter in this section is devoted to research reactors of the U.S.S.R. and another to Britain's fast neutron reactors. In addition, two very worthwhile chapters on the uses of a research reactor, again summarized from the original papers, are presented as Part I and give a very broad view of the future of this new field of endeavour. These two chapters should be particularly valuable to any'educational institution contem-plating entering the field of research with reactors.

At first glance it might appear that Dr. Beck has concentrated almost entirely on reactors from the U.S.A. and devoted very few pages to other types. This is true and is perhaps the only criticism of the book. One must remember though that the U.S.A. does have a wide variety of research reactors to describe, this being more or less their intention in the field, while other countries have con-centrated almost exclusively on one type of reactor.

The book is certainly an excellent reference book and will be joined no doubt by another larger volume on the same subject after the next Geneva Conference.

A . J. GOODJOHN Nuclear Division Canadair Limited

Mass Spectroscopy. By H. E. DUCKWORTH. Cambridge University Press. 1958. Pp. 206. $6.00.

MASS SPECTROSCOPISTS who have eagerly awaited this book by one of the leading contemporaries in their field may be disappointed by the restricted nature of the work. It is not the single volume which might carry them through the trials and tribulations of the mass spectroscopic art. However, the purpose of the Cambridge Monograph Series editors which is "the presentation of the results of original research" and the intent of the author "to give a concise description of two aspects of mass spectroscopy . . . the principles of operation . . . the applications . . . " are amply realized. Physicists in general will now have a fine reference, which

BOOKS 4 3

places the various developments in the history of mass spectroscopy in excellent perspective (chapter 1), discusses the theory of the machines (chapters 2-6) and some of the applications of particular interest to physicists (chapters 7-11) . To be sure, much of this has been done recently, and the author lists in his introduction many books on the subject as having been of use to him. The value of the present work lies in Duckworth's real ability to be concise, in his sure instinct for what is of interest to the physicist (the book is not intended for others) and in his mastery of the well-turned phrase.

Mass spectroscopy is now too detailed a field to be treated intimately in one volume, and this book may be one of the last general works to appear. Until someone writes the history of this field of endeavor, which has been one of the most coherent and fruitful of modern physics, Duckworth's chapter 1 will do nicely. It emphasises the roles of the giants (in particular Thomson, Aston and Dempster, now all deceased, and Bainbridge, Mattauch and Nier, all very much alive) somewhat to the exclusion of lesser men, but this is necessary for the single picture of the development. The five chapters on instrument principles will not suffice for the designer, but constitute a good introduction to the subject. Ion optics, sources, detectors, deflexion instruments, and time-of-flight instruments are treated in order. In this reviewer's opinion the division of instruments into these two classes is not the best one, and does not emphasise that effectively only three mass-differentiating principles are employed: deflexion in magnetic fields, in elec-tric fields, and spatial separation of monoenergetic ions in a drift tube ("time-of-flight"). A weakness inherent in any book on this subject lies in the stubborn refusal of mass spectrometry to become static, so that many new developments take place while the manuscript is in press. A striking example in this book is the absence of Duckworth's own high-resolution spectroscope from the list of notable instruments treated.

The second section of the book may be of greater use to the professional, and the many avenues of application of mass spectroscopes to several interesting general problems are rather fully covered. The major problems of isotopic abun-dance and atomic masses are treated in two chapters, and supplemented by an extensive appendix. Chapters on nuclear physics research and electron impact phenomena are good reviews of these topics. The final chapter on geologic appli-cations is probably the most complete.

With hundreds of workers active in similar fields, often undertaking experiments independently but simultaneously, it is a difficult matter to record and credit all fairly, as the reviewer knows from experience. Duckworth has been at least as thorough as any, and his seventeen pages of references constitute one of the most complete sets available. This thoughtful appendix alone makes the volume a must for the mass spectrometrist.

LARKIN KERWIN Laval University

Notes on Analog-Digital Conversion Techniques. Edited by ALFRED K. SUSKIND. The Technology Press, M. I. T. and John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Pp. 410. 1957. $10.00

ALTHOUGH ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERSION DEVICES are i n c r e a s i n g r a p i d l y i n i m p o r -tance and much has been published in the periodical literature on the techniques of their design and application, few books are available on this subject. Therefore a book such as this, containing a clear exposition of conversion techniques should prove very useful.

The one hundred and fifty-two pages comprising chapter V, Coding and Decod-ing Techniques for Electrical Signals and chapter VI, Coding and Decoding Tech-niques for Translational and Angular Motion, form the core of the book. In these two chapters methods of obtaining a digital representation of a physical


quantity such as voltage, time, angle or position are classified and described, together with methods of carrying out the inverse operation of obtaining physical quantities proportional to numbers present in a digital form. The factors affecting resolution, accuracy, speed and the possibility of parallel operation of the various conversion devices are carefully considered.

In chapter II on Sampling and Quantizing, the mathematical background of the conversion process is discussed. While the treatment is as simple as possible it is true that as the author of this chapter states, "The theory cannot be adequately discussed without the use of mathematical tools which are fairly advanced." For this reason this chapter will make far more difficult reading for the average engi-neer than will the remainder of the book, and it might have been advantageous to remove this material from its prominent place at the first of the book and relegate it to an appendix.

Chapters III and IV give an elementary discussion of digital representations and circuits so that the book may be useful to readers not versed in digital tech-niques. The references at the end of these chapters are entirely to the periodical literature which is unfortunate, since several text books are available which cover this field.

As the title of the book indicates, this book forms a set of notes rather than a monograph on the subject of analog-digital conversion. It may therefore be unfair to be too critical of the choice of subject matter. However two respects in which the book might have been improved are suggested. The introduction might well have been enlarged to describe more fully the various fields in which the techniques described find application, and the last two chapters which are devoted to a single example of a data-reduction system might have been enlarged to include examples of control systems also. This might have been done without increasing the length of the book greatly if irrelevant material had been deleted.

In spite of these minor criticisms, the reviewer considers this a sound and useful book in a field where information in book form is still rather scarce.

R . W . MCKAY University of Toronto

Zone Melting. By W. G. PFANN. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1958. Pp. 236. $7.50.

THIS BOOK is the first comprehensive digest on the subject of zone melting and ir appropriately written by the inventor of the process. In the six years since its discovery the technique lu s been modified in many ways, applied to many different materials, and for several purposes. In surveying this diversity of methods and objectives, the author has presented a concise outline of the theory and known art of the subject with referesces to most, if not all, of the relevant publications.

He devotes the first three chapters to a discussion of the theory relating the dynamics of the zone melting to that of the ancient technique of fractional crystal-lization. Elsewhere he peints out the analogy between it and the separation of components by distillation. Zone melting is a special case of the general method of manipulating a solute l'or impurity) by effecting a phase change in the solvent. The distribution coefficient defined as the ratio of the solute concentration in the freezing solid to that in ihe main body of the liquid, is modified to an effective value by introduction of crystal growth rate and diffusion constants according to the Burton-Prim-Slichter theory. Introduction of such parameters as zone length, ingot length, zone modification allowing for stirring, and number of passes allow calculations to be made on the anticipated behaviour of the solute in practical zone melting devices of various designs.

Turning to the more practical aspect, the author outlines a procedure to follow for the design of a zone refiner and discusses at length many different arrange-ments of charge, heaters îtnd travel mechanisms including the less common vertical ingot refiner with floating zone technique; and also the horizontal ingot refiner

BOOKS 4 5

with magnetic lévitation methods useful for dealing with highly reactive materials such as silicon, titanium and iron. A later chapter discusses other schemes for continous-process zone refining. Most of these have quite complicated containers which might be expected to limit their use to low temperature ranges and less reactive materials, and may be expected to show their usefulness in extracting fresh water from salt by a zone refining technique for example.

Another chapter gives notes on the surprisingly large number of materials to which zone refining has been applied.

The final chapters are on zone levelling, single crystal growth and methods of altering one or more of the parameters influencing the effectiveness of the segre-gation action so as to create n-p junctions in the ingot. An appendix gives a num-ber of graphs depicting relative solute concentrations as a function of distance along the ingot and number of passes.

The writer recommends this book as very useful to anyone wishing to acquire a general understanding of the principles and practice of zone melting. Also the would-be designer of a specific zone melting apparatus will find formulae and prin-ciples helpful in his design.

D . A . ANDERSON Canadian Marconi Ltd. Montreal

Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory. By A. I. KHINCHIN. Translated by N . A . SILVERMAN a n d M . D . FIELDMAN. D o v e r P u b l i c a t i o n s , Inc . Pp . 120. $ 1 . 5 0 .

INFORMATION THEORY sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus about ten years ago, Zeus being C. E. Shannon who, in two papers in 1948, defined a measure of "amount of information" by analogy with entropy in statistical mechanics and proved the principal theorem of the subject which asserts, roughly, that the maxi-mum efficiency of a noisy channel for transmitting information can be approxi-mated arbitrarily closely by use of a suitable code.

Shannon's original proofs assumed unnecessarily restrictive hypotheses and contained logical gaps. These deficiencies have almost been removed by B. McMillan and A. Feinstein. The present book is a translation of two articles in Russian by Khinchin which give a mathematically satisfactory development of the theory systematizing and correcting the work of these previous authors. Khinchin admits that his argument is "long and complicated" but, except for the use of Lebesgue-Stieltjes integral it is elementary and straightforward. Khinchin's great expository power, already demonstrated in his previous works, is admirably evident in the present book which will merely remain the definitive treatment of Information Theory as it existed in 1957.

A . J. COLEMAN Department of Mathematics University of Toronto

G. I. Taylor: Scientific Papers. Vol 1: Mechanics of Solids. Edited by G. K. BATCHELOR. Cambridge University Press. 1958. Pp. 593. $12.50.

G. L TAYLOR'S WORK on the mechanics of solids and fluids has been of such impor-tance that it needs little comment here. The whole of the modern theory of plasticity of solids is founded on the fundamental idea of dislocations put forward by Taylor in 1934, and independently by Orowan and Polanyi. The theories of turbulence in fluids owe much to Taylor's papers on "Statistical Theory of Tur-bulence" written in the middle thirties.

The present volume contains 41 papers on the solid state only, but it is to be followed by three more volumes on fluid motion. The papers range in date from


1917 to 1955 and so provide a vivid outline of the history of the subject over the last forty years. They also demonstrate the breadth of the work of Taylor and his associates, from detailed, painstaking experimental work of the highest order to intricate theoretical treatment of elastic theory.

It is inevitable that many of the papers are in detail no longer of current interest but several are such classics that they should be studied in the original by all workers in the field. The style, exactness of treatment and clarity of most of the papers should be an object lesson to most contemporary research authors. Even the "historic" papers are valuable in pointing the progress of research—in one volume we see the progrès» from the state where X-ray spectroscopy was a difficult research task with scarce equipment to the present day when some similar work is almost standard practice for a technician in a metallurgical laboratory.

Within the field of "M:chanics of Solids" the book covers in particular three major topics: the application of X-rays and other techniques to the plastic de-formation of crystals; the development of theories of plasticity and the agreement of such theories with experiment (no theory is presented without accompanying experimental support); ths application of the theory of elasticity to the problems of slip and fracture. The minor departures from these topics occur as a result of wartime work; three papers on the use of soap films in torsion and flexure in 1917-18 and several related to the effects of explosives in 1940-48.

Cambridge University Press and the editor are to be congratulated on both the quality of the publication and their enterprise in making available this outstanding contribution to science during the author's lifetime. It is also an outstanding tribute to a "grand old man" of modern science.

H . A . ELLIOTT Royal Military College

Quantum Mechanics: Non-Relativistic Theory. By L. D. LANDAU and E. M. LIFSHITZ. T r a n s l a t e d f r o m the R u s s i a n by J. B. SYKES a n d J. S. BELL. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc. Pp. 515. $12.50.

DESPITE THE LARGE NUMBER of available texts on quantum mechanics, it is always gratifying to see a new ane, particularly if it departs in any important respect from established patterns. Landau and Lifshitz's work is a useful addition to the list of quantum texts, even if it is not the ultimate contribution to the field.

The weakness of the Book, in the opinion of this reviewer, lies in its intro-duction to the subject and its treatment of the basic concepts. As with most other texts, it fails to provide an adequate and convincing case for the formulation of quantum physics in terms of linear operator theory; nor does it give a sufficiently general and coherent account of quantum mechanics in terms of operator theory. Its treatment of fundamentals is perhaps somewhat superior to the ad hoc approach of the more pedestrian texts, but it certainly does not portray the grand sweep of the subject.

It has been said that the best criterion of texts on quantum mechanics is their treatment of angular momentum theory. On this score too Landau and Lifshitz fall rather short of topnotch performance. Orbital and spin angular momentum are treated in different ard well-separated chapters, with little suggestion of under-lying unity. While they are more ambitious than most, dealing with the matrix elements of vector opera ors and of spherical harmonics and with the addition of angular momenta, there is an awkwardness and disunity about their treatment of the subject.

One should, however, balance these criticisms against some very solid virtues of the book. Throughout one finds interesting material not included in many quantum mechanics texts. Each chapter abounds with worked problems covering a wide range of applications. The chapters on perturbation theory and on quasi-classical methods are above average. In the discussion of exchange symmetry one

BOOKS 4 7

finds an unexpected reference to Young diagrams. The applications to valency, and to atomic and molecular spectroscopy, are dealt witii considerably more comprehensively than usual, and on the whole very clearly. There is also quite a long chapter on group theory and its applications. A final chapter on motion in a magnetic field is also better than average. Lastly, Landau and Lifshitz sensibly follow most continental writers in assuming a knowledge of, and freely using, the hypergeometric functions.

All in all, the criticisms we have made represent a departure of this book from expectations of near-perfection; it is still a superior text.

Foundations of Modern Physical Science. By GERALD HOLTON and DUANE H. D. ROLLER. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Pp. XXIII + 782. $8.50.

THIS BOOK is intended mainly for use in a one-year general physics course for arts or premedical students and for science majors outside physics and engineering. The presentation of fundamental concepts and theories of physical science follows closely the pattern outlined recently in the Report by the American Association of Physics Teachers. The basis on which the book was developed can best be illustrated by the following quotation from one of the sample course syllabi: "The center of the course lies in physics, although connections are made to other physical sciences whenever appropriate. Instead of adhering to the ancient but rather arbitrary division of physics into rigid categories (e.g., mechanics, heat, etc.), we let the historical and philosophical development of science suggest the organization and unification of the material".

This approach has some pedagogic value in that the student can follow in a more continuous way the development of physical science and to a certain extent participate in it by referring to some of the works listed at the end of chapters and also by attempting to answer the additional problems. In many cases, these prob-lems cover subject matter that could not be included in the text.

With regard to the selection of subject matter, the authors have again tried to implement the recommendations of the A.A.P.T. This has resulted in the omission of a number of topics, such as, statics, acoustics, geometrical optics, photometry, etc., which might have a particular importance for certain groups of students. However, this disadvantage can easily be overcome by using this textbook in conjunction with a "classic" text, such as that of Sears and Zemansky, or Shortley and Williams, or White, etc.

This textbook is well written and presented in a very stimulating way. The inclusion of reproductions of pages from original documents and portraits of out-standing scientists surely adds colour to the work. On the whole, the book deserves the highest praise and can be recommended, not only for use in a general physics course, but also as supplementary reading for more advanced students in physics and engineering.

JACQUES HÉBERT University of Ottawa

Particulate Clouds, Dusts Smokes and Mists. By H. L. GREEN and W. R. LANE. E. & F.N. Spon Ltd. 1957. Pp. XIX, 425, 8 plates.

THE AIM OF THE AUTHORS of Particulate Clouds is to "fill the need for a book which deals with the basic physics and physical chemistry of particulate clouds and treats them as unified systems, since many different types of cloud have essentially the same properties." The book is divided into two parts, Part I dealing with the objective quoted above from the authors' preface, and Part II with Industrial and Environmental aspects of dispersions of particles in gases.

Part I, consisting of 277 pages, presents an excellent review of the literature on all aspects of the subject of dispersion in gases with an immense bibliography


including references to work published in 1956. The subjects discussed include theoretical and experimental aspects of the formation of particulate clouds, phy-sical characteristics, optical properties, coagulation, deposition and filtration, sampling and estimation, and diffusion into the atmosphere.

Particulate Clouds will be extremely useful for its extensive coverage and bibliography but in general the original papers or more detailed works must be consulted for critical evaluation of most of the subjects discussed. It was dis-appointing to the reviewer that the unified approach added so little to a technical subject which is still an art in many of its applications. From this viewpoint books such as Herdan's Small Particle Statistics and Van De Hulst's Light Scattering by Small Particles, dealing adequately with single aspects of the subject, are much more satisfactory than the present volume.

Part II consisting of 127 pages covers the more immediately practical aspects of dispersions in gases. The treatment is generally of the same character as Part I, i.e., the chapter on collectors describes the various types of collectors available but does not give enough information to judge which type would be best in any application.

The layout of the book is pleasing with clear typography. The binding appears somewhat light for a book that will be used as a reference. It is well indexed and contains adequate diagrams and tables.

F . S. EADIE The Sharpies Corp. Research Laboratory Bridgeport, Pennsylvania

BOOKS RECEIVED

Theory of Functions of a Real Variable. By E. W. HOBSON. Dover Publications. V o l . I , pp . 7 3 6 , V o l . I I , p p . 7 7 8 . $ 3 . 0 0 per v o l u m e .

Tables for the Design of Factorial Experiments. By T. KITIGAWA and M. MITONE. Dover Publications. I'D. 253. $8.80.

Physical Chemistry of Hiçh Polymers. By MAURICE L. HUGGINS. John Wiley and S o n s , Inc . 1 9 5 8 . P p . 175 . $ 6 . 5 0 .

Principles of Geochemist-y. By BRIAN MASON. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1958 P p . 3 0 9 . $ 8 . 5 0 .

Lectures on Ordinary Di,Jerential Equations. By W. HUREWICZ. John Wiley and S o n s , Inc . 1 9 5 8 . P p . 1 2 2 . $ 5 . 0 0 .

W I L E Y B O O K S ^ S '

PRINCIPLES OF MODERN PHYSICS By A. P. French, University of South Carolina. Traces development of concepts and theories. 1958. 355 pages. Illus. $6.75.

ELEMENTARY STATISTICAL PHYSICS By C. Kittel, University of California, Berkeley. Broad coverage of applications. 1958. 228 pages. Illus. $8.00.

ATMOSPHERIC EXPLORATIONS Edited by H e n r y G. H o u g h t o n , M.I.T. Papers presented at Ben j amin Franklin Memorial Symposium of A.A.A.S. A Technology Press Book, M.I.T. 1958. 125 pages. Illus. $6.50.

PRINCIPLES OF NOISE By J. J. Freeman, University of Maryland. Principles and techniques used in noise analysis. 1958. 299 pages. $9.25.

CONFERENCE ON EXTREMELY HIGH TEMPERATURES Edited by Heinz Fischer, and Lawrence C. Mansur, both of Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Bedford, Mass. 1958. 258 pages. Illus. $9.75.

PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS OF RANDOM NOISE THEORY By Ju l ius S. Bendat , The Ramo-Wooldridge Corp. 1958. 431 pages. Illus. $11.00.

HANDBOOK OF AUTOMATION, COMPUTATION, AND CONTROL Edited by Eugene M. Grabbe, Simon Ramo, and Dean E. Wooldridge, all of The Ramo-Wooldridge Corp. Vol. 1 — Control Fundamentals. 1958. 1020 pages. $17.00. Vol. 2 — Computers and Data Processing. In Press. Vol. 3 — Systems and Components. In Press.

TOPICS IN ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY By Dean A. Watkins, Stanford University. Approx. 136 pages. Prob. $6.50.

SURVEYS IN APPLIED MATHEMATICS Vol. I — Elasticity and Plasticity. Goodier, Hodge. 1958. In Press. Vol. II — Dynamics and Nonlinear Mechanics. Leimanis, Minorsky.

1958. In Press. Vol. Ill — Mathematical Aspects of Subsonic and Transonic Gas

Dynamics. Bers. 1958. In Press. Vol. IV —- Some Aspects of Analysis and Probability. Kaplansky,

Hewitt, Hall, and Fortet. 1958. In Press. Vol. V — Numerical Analysis and Partial Differential Equations.

Forsythe and Rosenbloom. 1958. In Press. Pfann: ZONE MELTING. 1958. 236 pages. $7.50. Susskind: NOTES ON ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERSION TECHNIQUES.

1958. 410 pages. Illus. $10.00. Dow: FUNDAMENTALS OF ADVANCED MISSILES. Approx. 586 pages.

Prob. $11.75. Smullin and Haus: NOISE IN ELECTRON DEVICES 1958. Approx. 432

pages. Prob. $12.00. Chamot and Mason: HANDBOOK OF CHEMICAL MICROSCOPY. Vol. I,

Third Edition. 1958. Approx. 526 pages. Prob. $14.00. Taylor: AN INTRODUCTION TO FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS.

1958. Approx. 416 pages. Prob. $12.50.

In Canada:

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RENOUF PUBLISHING COMPANY, Montreal, Quebec

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