Bibliography

Dictionary of Physics, Editor-in-Chief Prof. P. N. Belikov, Vols. I, III, ONTI NKTP USSR, 1936–1937, Moscow.

The rapid development of physics and of the sciences related to it at the end of the last century and during the present one has created a need for a very special kind of literature, one that would make it easier to find one’s way among all the works that have appeared.

The need became clear for the publication of special physical dictionaries, in which one could, when reading specialized literature, obtain a number of explanations that are difficult to find in textbooks and that are quite necessary for readers with little experience, as well as for readers working in fields adjacent to physics.

Attempts to create such dictionaries have already been made abroad. We have similar undertakings in England; recently a physics dictionary was published in Germany. It must be noted that, despite the great difficulty involved in publishing such a reference work, the dictionaries published abroad have a number of substantial defects. This applies in particular to the German physics dictionary, where the unevenness of the articles and the absence of the necessary literature on a number of questions often make this dictionary insufficient.

There have been no similar publications in Soviet literature, and at the present time the main editorial office of Technical Encyclopedias and Dictionaries has undertaken the publication of a physics dictionary, the first and third volumes of which have appeared in print.

A review of the two volumes that have appeared shows that both the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. P. N. Belikov, and the editorial board, which includes well-known specialists in the field of the physical sciences, have approached with due attention the publication of a dictionary necessary both for teachers of physics in higher and secondary educational institutions and for students preparing their diploma theses and preparing for scientific research.

A careful examination of the dictionary shows that, in general, this publication satisfies its purpose and is already in the form in which the physics dictionary has appeared at the present time an edition that significantly enriches our contemporary scientific literature. However, as should be the case in any new undertaking, we can find shortcomings in this dictionary that must be corrected in the next edition, which must undoubtedly appear in the very near future.

We shall point out the main shortcomings we noticed during our examination. The first thing that strikes the eye is that Volumes I and III are not identical in the degree of difficulty of presentation. Volume III as a whole requires of the reader more knowledge and greater ability to deal with scientific questions than Volume I.

If we pass from these general remarks to more detailed ones, then above all attention is drawn to the fact that in a whole number of important articles there are no bibliographical references. As an example we may cite the entry “acoustics,” where not a single textbook or course is cited, although such works exist both in Soviet literature and especially in foreign literature. In some cases the references are incomplete, and many classic textbooks and articles are not indicated.

The article on acoustic ponderomotive effects, written by the major foreign specialist Weimann, presents this question not quite accurately, since Lebedev’s extremely important investigation, showing that a plane wave always acts on a resonator, however it may be adjusted, is not cited here. In some articles that appear because of blind adherence to the publisher’s plan, words are also indicated that in fact have not been printed. As an example we may cite the word “affine transformations,” where there is a reference to p. 236 (see group theory). The reader will search in vain for this latter article—it is not in the dictionary.

Some articles, while giving an extensive exposition of the subject, do not touch upon the most recent data in this field of science. As an example one may point to “Huygens’ construction” and “Huygens’ principle,” occupying almost 3 pages. These articles set forth in detail all the old ideas about Huygens’ principle, belonging both to Huygens himself and to Fresnel. The new investigations, excellently presented, for example, by Lummer in the well-known textbook of Müller-Pouillet, have not been given. These investigations, belonging to Kirchhoff, Schwarzschild, and Sommerfeld, are not at all noted in the articles mentioned. Of the works indicated in the bibliographical references, only Drude’s Optics is cited, and, unfortunately, the author’s surname is distorted (written Drube).

A rather thorough point is the following: in the dictionary there are words in the field of geophysics such as hydrophysics and a number of analogous words that have acquired special significance in recent times, but the word “geophysics” is absent from the dictionary.

The above-mentioned errors are found in Volume I of the dictionary; we could cite a number of similar errors from Volume III.

In general, upon attentive examination one may say that for persons engaged in physics and especially interested in certain neighboring fields of the physical sciences, this dictionary, despite the shortcomings indicated, even in the form in which it exists at present, will be of undoubted use. The dictionary will be useful to young professors, docents, and teachers both of higher and of secondary schools, as well as to all specialists in neighboring fields—chemistry, biology, and technology—who wish to obtain a clear idea of new branches of physics with which they may happen to come into contact in specialized treatises in their own disciplines. One may wish that the shortcomings found in the two volumes already issued be corrected in the following volumes and that the separate articles, which are sometimes sharply different in difficulty and demand from the reader different levels of knowledge, should in subsequent volumes have a more homogeneous character, adapted to a single level of the reader’s knowledge.

With these corrections, the dictionary will play an enormous role in the development of the physical sciences in our country, and one may wish it the widest possible circulation among people interested in exact natural science.

P. P. Lazarev, Moscow