H. SPONER, Molekülspektren und ihre Anwendung auf chemische Probleme I. Tabelle, S. VI+154, Berlin, Springer 1935; II. Text S. XIII+506, Berlin, Springer 1936.

G. SPONER, The Structure of the Molecule*.

The author of the book has, with enormous conscientiousness, gathered in his monograph a vast amount of material scattered through the pages of specialized journals, and has carefully systematized it. In this respect the first volume—the tables—is especially valuable; in it the results of numerous experiments have been systematized.

The first part of the tables comprises spectroscopic data for diatomic molecules, for which the theory of molecular spectra is most highly developed. The tables are accompanied by an exhaustive bibliographic index of the works from which the tabulated material was borrowed. In the second part, data are presented on the structure of polyatomic molecules, obtained by the study of Raman and infrared spectra. An exhaustive bibliography successfully supplements the tables. Owing to their complexity, the electronic spectra of polyatomic molecules have as yet been little studied. Therefore the third part of the tables, unlike the first two parts, is only a preliminary summary of what has been done up to the present day.

With her work, Gertrud Sponer has summed up the results of the enormous and laborious work carried out by D. Franck’s school. Henceforth no investigator working in this field can do without the tables compiled by the author—tables that draw a sharp boundary between what is already well known and studied in the field of molecular spectra, and what still lies ahead for study.

Whereas the first part—the tables—will for a long time become a classic reference handbook for those working in the field of molecular spectra, the same cannot be said of the second part of the book—the text. The subject of molecular spectra is too extensive to be covered in a single monograph while avoiding a certain abstractness. Books have already appeared and, in the future, will undoubtedly continue to appear, devoted to individual areas of the theory of molecules. Stuart’s book on the structure of molecules is already available; Hellmann’s book on quantum chemistry is in press. There are deeper and more extensive monographs on infrared and Raman spectra. The reader will undoubtedly prefer more complete and exhaustive monographs to the second part of Sponer’s book, which suffers from a certain conciseness of exposition inevitable given the breadth of the monograph’s subject. Some disappointment is caused—

* Based on materials of the Bibliographic Sector of the State Scientific Library of the NKTP of the USSR.

the chapter on the chemical bond. The book appeared in 1936; meanwhile the exposition of the theory of the chemical bond stands at the level of 1931 and, to a considerable extent, is devoted to accounts of the work of the Göttingen school. In the intervening years, however, quantum chemistry has substantially outgrown the framework within which the author of the book presents it. The book is undoubtedly valuable and useful, and will bring enormous benefit to those for whom it is intended—specifically molecular spectroscopists—but it cannot gain a wide circle of readers, and therefore translating it would be superfluous.

The author of the book himself, a pure-blooded “Aryan,” as is clear from the preface, is outside Germany. The example of this book shows with particular vividness what fascism means for science: death and the complete impossibility of continuing scientific work in contemporary Germany. At the same time, it gives a vivid idea of the enormous scientific work carried out in recent years by the close-knit scientific collective under the leadership of J. Franck.

Yu. Rumer, Moscow