Bibliography

Physics in Industry, American Institute of Physics, New York, 1937, pp. 290.

Physics in Industry

The book under review is a collection of articles made up of papers read at a meeting devoted to the fifth anniversary of the founding of the American Institute of Physics. Eight of these articles were written by major figures from industrial research laboratories, and among the authors are names well known to us as well. The last two articles are devoted to questions of training scientific-research workers for industry. One of them treats the question from the point of view of a person engaged in such training; the other—from the point of view of the head of a laboratory in which the young specialist is to work. The preface was written by K. T. Compton.

The officially proclaimed aim of the book is to acquaint broad circles of non-specialists with the significance of physics for industry and, consequently, for human society. If, however, one considers this book not in isolation, but in connection, for example, with Lengmuir’s article, a translation of which was printed in No. 6 of Uspekhi khimii for 1938, one gets the impression that the authors had before them another, incomparably more important task—to show the extent to which physics is useful to industry, as a good “research payer.” This is indicated, further, by the inclusion in the collection of the last two articles, which are so specialized that they are of not the slightest interest to the general public. Finally, the same is indicated by certain quotations (from serious journals) cited by the authors—not in aid of their case—and which, for a Soviet reader brought up over 21 years of Soviet rule in the deepest and sincere respect for every true science, whether “pure” or “applied,” look simply wild. Let us dwell on one of them. A certain Mr. Grosvenor Atterbury, in the journal Architecture, arguing in favor of constructing cheaper and more comfortable dwellings, expresses himself in the following way:

“What in reality interests us most keenly today? The discovery that my umbrella, if it flies through space at a sufficient speed, contracts until (if only Einstein’s theory is what it noisily claims to be) it disappears altogether? Nonsense. I can lose my umbrella quickly and permanently without that... We spend millions on building 20-inch telescopes in order to examine the universe and establish whether it is becoming measurably smaller or incalculably larger. All this, under present conditions, seems brilliantly useless, especially if one takes into account the millions of people who do not have decent dwellings because not one of our great minds has concentrated on the urgent problem of human housing...” Here is not the place to enter into

polemics with Mr. Etterbury, and therefore we shall confine ourselves only to pointing out that many heroes of O. Henry’s stories discoursed on scientific topics in a very similar way.

In any case, this book as a whole is of interest in that, apart from the will of its authors and therefore objectively, it is an illustration of the actual position of science in the foremost and wealthy capitalist country. It is also of interest in relation to its immediate content. In order to show the broad scope of the subject, we give a list of the articles; some of them bear picturesque titles with an advertising tinge:

I. Achievements of industrial physics in the glass industry. E. S. Sullivan.
II. Physics in metallurgy. Z. Jeffries and E. K. Adams.
III. Let the physicist change your lubricant. R. D. Foote.
IV. Vibrations and industry. J. R. Den Hartog.
V. Construction—the forgotten child of physics. J. E. Burchard.
VI. Evolution of the piezoquartz filter. O. E. Buckley.
VII. The physicist acquires an airship. K. B. Millikan.
VIII. Some physical problems of electric-power production. J. Slepian.
IX. Training physicists for industry from the teacher’s point of view. G. E. Dodge.
X. Training physicists for industry from the industrialist’s point of view. A. R. Olpin.

The presentation of all the articles, with the exception of the third, is at a level that makes them accessible to a genuinely very wide circle of readers, and it seems to us desirable to translate them into Russian, since, being written by major specialists and, as one can see, good popularizers, they could be issued in some popular series and would undoubtedly be of great benefit for the broad popularization of physics, its significance, and those practical tasks which it can pose and is able to solve. In this latter respect the book may also be useful to workers in industry.

The last two articles are, as has already been noted, in no way connected with the main theme of the book. But they too are of great interest, and they ought to be printed in some journal dealing with questions of the training of technical personnel. This task, especially in connection with the enormous step forward that we shall take in the third five-year plan, is undoubtedly a most serious and responsible one, and therefore here it is extremely desirable to make abundant use of the experience accumulated in this direction by American industry. These articles, of course, reflect to a considerable degree the commercial point of view on personnel training, but at the same time, being based on substantial questionnaire material, they also provide objectively correct conclusions. In this respect, for example, they indicate the insufficiency of the general cultural level of graduates of American technical colleges and the demand for raising this level. Quite correct and very valuable is also, for example, the emphasis on the particular complexity of the tasks arising before a researcher working in production, in connection with the creation of a full-fledged, from the production point of view, object or method, as well as the statement of the fact that it is practically impossible to prepare a specialist for precisely that narrow field in which he will in reality have to work. Our educational institutions should undoubtedly take these two circumstances into account more than has been the case up to now.

Finally, about the design of the book. It is at that level which, unfortunately, is achieved among us by few and incomparably more

...publications that deserve it. One should note one of its features, which, despite the simplicity of the device, greatly enlivens the book. This is the inclusion of portraits of the authors.

N. Khlebnikov, Moscow