Techniques of Physical Experiment. Edited by Acad. A. F. Ioffe. State Publishing House. Moscow—Leningrad, 1929, pp. 363, price 6 rubles 80 kopecks.

At the present time, more than ever, a need is felt for a book like the one under review. The number of persons engaged in physical experiment has grown extraordinarily. Moreover, work of this kind is going on not only in large physics laboratories, where there is a considerable amount of accumulated experience and where one can find help from one’s fellow workers; physical experiment has to be encountered everywhere, in laboratories of many types (chemical, biological, medical), and in numerous factory laboratories, where the number of workers is limited and where it is often the case (especially in the provinces) that there is no one to turn to for advice. But even in large laboratories a book of this kind is a welcome assistant, for, with the present rapid progress of experimental technique, there is hardly any laboratory that does not need experience from outside.

It is, of course, quite understandable that any book of recipes and practical information is extremely individual. Therefore the most desirable are collective works of this sort, in which each question is illuminated by persons having personal experience in it. The inevitable variegation and unevenness of parts is not so very important. One must of course put up with the incompleteness of books of this kind as well, especially when we are dealing with the first attempt of this sort. Both in its contents and in its description of the most recommended instruments and methods, Techniques of Physical Experiment bears the stamp of the Physico-Technical Institute and of the Laboratories headed by Acad. A. Ioffe—one of the best physical laboratories in the ...

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of our country. This book, too, was compiled with the character of the work being carried out there in mind.

It is difficult for a reviewer to express an opinion on individual chapters and sections. Each of us has his own experience in one or another group of questions and is inclined to regard as best the method which, in his hands, has given the best result. Since Techniques of Physical Experiment is a collection of information and advice not of a bookish character, but wholly tested by the experience of the compilers, there is no ground whatever for regretting that precisely these methods, and not others, are described here.

The book should be regarded as an excellent beginning, and one should wish for the further development of this undertaking—not only, of course, by the efforts of the workers of the laboratories indicated. The Optical Institute in Leningrad could make most valuable additions to such a book by describing optical measurements, to which little space is allotted in the book under review. Other laboratories and individual workers, too, could be useful as co-authors. I would, on the contrary, consider harmful any attempt to create a Technique by the efforts of a single author, who would inevitably have to write three-quarters of the book “from someone else’s words.” But it would perhaps be very desirable if the Leningrad Physico-Technical Laboratory found it possible to enlist, for the next edition, the cooperation of as broad a circle of workers as possible, including those outside its own walls. Under the conditions of our book market, the publication of two independent books of this type, with inevitable overlapping of content, is hardly possible. Therefore the work of a collective, expanded in the manner indicated, could prove the most productive.

Gr. Landsberg.