METAL PHYSICS. A collection of articles edited by S. G. Konobeevsky, series Advances in Physics, M.—L., ONTI, GTTI, 1933, 240 pp., 14 figs., price 2 rub. 75 kopecks, 3,000 copies.

The collection includes: the editor’s preface, Rosenhain’s report “Physics and Metallography,” delivered by him in 1929, Ewald’s article “The Structure of Solids from the Atomic Point of View,” Yu. V. Khodakov’s compilation article, prepared on the basis of two papers by Goldschmidt from 1926 and 1927 and Goldschmidt’s 1929 report, entitled “The Structure of Crystals and Chemical Composition,” and Bernal’s article “Results of Modern Research on Metals,” published in 1931. As the editor rightly noted in the preface, these articles constitute, as it were, the first part of the collection. They discuss the general foundations of solid-state physics and the structure of the lattice of atomic bonds. The other articles in the collection concern the question of the plastic deformation of metals. These are: Delinger’s article “The Structure of Metals,” 1930; Polanyi’s “Deformation, Rupture, and Strengthening of Crystals,” 1928; Carpenter’s “The Metallic Crystal,” 1930; and Wever’s “The Texture of Metal after Cold Deformation,” 1931.

Such a collection, intended for the engineering and technical scientific active, is, by the nature of the questions covered in it and by the selection of authors, very valuable not only for persons who have a poor command of foreign languages, but also for workers who know them.

The original articles published in the collection are far from being available in every library. True, almost all of them were printed at different times in Advances in the Physical Sciences; nevertheless, their publication in a single little book may prove useful, since a number of the questions raised continue to serve as the subject of further research in many of our own and foreign laboratories, and many ideas about the nature of metals and alloys continue to be debated in contemporary journals. To have at hand a résumé of many years of work by authoritative authors at some stage in the development of metal physics is very important, since even with various changes in our ideas it is often extremely necessary to recall the position that existed some time ago.

Therefore even the fact that the publication of the collection was extremely delayed (the setting, signed for press, lay for about a year, and the collection entered the book market in early 1934, i.e., on the average four years after these works were published abroad) — even this unfortunate ...

this fact does not diminish the value of the collection for broad circles of metal researchers.

Without entering into an assessment of the positive significance of the works collected in the volume, which are well known to Soviet metal researchers, we shall dwell on certain negative points.

It must be noted that the title of the collection, Metallophysics, is too broad. The collection touches on only some questions of metallophysics. Not a single article is devoted to the phenomena of electrical conductivity and magnetic properties. The chapter on surface phenomena is not touched upon. The large chapter that has at once serious theoretical significance and practical interest—namely the chapter on solid solutions—is scarcely touched by this selection of articles. Also not included in the collection are results based on spectral analysis, the liquid state of the metal, the question of amorphous metal, and a number of other questions and sections of metallophysics. And since this is so, in our opinion the collection should not have been given such an obligating title as Metallophysics.

Further, the collection, unfortunately, is not supplemented by a bibliography of articles on the questions touched upon that had appeared in print by the time the collection was submitted for typesetting, among them articles by Soviet authors. Such a bibliographic addition would have been highly desirable.

From Bernal’s article the collection omits the table “Structure and Most Important Properties of the Metallic Elements and Compounds Investigated by X-Ray Methods.” In the original it occupies 10 pages, covers more than two hundred elements and compounds, and contains lattice constants, atomic volume, the number of electrons per atom, electrical resistance, and so on. Of course, such a table requires additions and certain changes, but this is no grounds for its exclusion; and if it has been omitted from the collection, the reader should have been notified of this.

In the translation there occur certain infelicitous terms, such as, for example: “temperirovanie” (p. 132) instead of “annealing”; “single-phase alloy” (p. 222) instead of “homogeneous”; “test specimens” (pp. 211, 212, 213) instead of “specimens for testing.”

The phrases sound awkward: “at, for example, identical distances” (p. 131), “in the cases investigated up to now” (p. 119).

Although the caption to Fig. 7 on p. 195 says “one can see,” this is incorrect: in this figure nothing is visible. It would have been better to give a schematic drawing. In the caption to Fig. 9 on p. 200, nothing can be trusted: “on the left an unstretched part, on the right a stretched part”—exactly the opposite; “the formation of grains begins”—nothing is visible; “the arrow indicates this place,” but there is no arrow.

Even where the drawings are given as line drawings, designations are omitted; for example, in Fig. 3, p. 216, there is no axis 110. References to figures are confused (pp. 186, 187).

One would like to recommend a collection of articles on questions of metallophysics to students, but misprints overlooked in proofreading are so substantial that in places they make the text of the translation difficult for a student to understand. For example, crystallographic indices are confused on pp. 73, 184, 185, 191; either a sign is omitted or incorrect brackets are given. A number of other negligences—for example, the elements invented by the publishing house Bb(?) and Ct(?) (p. 149); “sketerite” (p. 167) instead of skutterudite; the absence of an indication of the origin of the paragraph beginning where the editor’s note ends, concluding on p. 73, to what page the footnote given on p. 187 refers the reader, and so forth—a number of such defects gives the collection an untidy appearance, compounded by careless layout (for example, p. 88).

For the graduating student, the young engineer, and the worker who does not have at hand a good library with originals, timely collections of articles selected on a particular question are needed. The collection Metallophysics covers a number of interesting questions of metallophysics, a discipline of current importance for us. The principal article, “The Structure of Solids” (by Ewald), is supplied with valuable notes and explanations by the editor.

Bibliography

Thus, the contents of the collection meet the needs of broad circles of readers, but the “quality of the product” is such that it can be “recommended for use” only with great caution.

Evg. Bakhmetev