C. S. Barrett. Structure of Metals (Crystallographic methods, principles and data). Translated under the editorship of Prof. Ya. S. Umanskii. State Scientific-Technical Publishing House for Literature on Ferrous and Nonferrous Metallurgy. Moscow, 1948, 676 pp., 416 figures, with 9 appendices of reference character.

This book is intended for engineers and scientific workers working in the fields of radiography, physical metallurgy, and metal processing. It sets forth in detail the methods of X-ray investigation of metals and alloys, the specific applications of radiography, and the results of X-ray investigations.

In its construction, content, and scope this book may be compared with X-Ray Analysis of Metals by G. S. Zhdanov and Ya. S. Umanskii. The latter, however, appeared 9 years ago, and therefore the appearance on the book market of a monograph in the same field must be acknowledged as timely and desirable. Barrett’s book, although not divided into parts, can be divided—as was done in X-Ray Analysis of Metals—into general and special sections. In the first of these (8 chapters, 200 pages) the fundamentals of X-ray structural analysis are presented; in the second, particular problems of physical metallurgy are considered.

The book contains a very large amount of factual material, numerical tables, and literature references. There is no doubt that in a number of plant laboratories it may serve as a kind of reference publication. It is also possible to use the book as a teaching aid. However, the pedagogical merits of the book are not so great that it could serve as a textbook, and it is impossible for it to compete in this respect with the excellent book by G. S. Zhdanov and Ya. S. Umanskii.

The least successful part of the book is the first, general section, devoted to general questions of X-ray structural analysis. Barrett is evidently not a great specialist in these questions. The exposition is frankly compilatory in character and, as usually happens in such cases, in many places unclear and confused.

Many inaccurate and vague formulations are contained in the first chapter, “Fundamentals of Crystallography.” A number of examples could be given. I shall confine myself to only a few. On p. 25 there is the following curious enumeration: “To determine the Miller indices... it is necessary 1) to find the intercepts cut off on three axes, 2) to take the reciprocals of these numbers, 3) to reduce these ratios to mutually prime numbers, and 4) to enclose the three numbers obtained in parentheses.” On p. 27 it is said that, as a result of combining vectors of translation, motion arises in such-and-such a direction. The editor and translator sensed the shortcomings of the chapter and tried to soften them with notes indicating that the author avoids precise definitions of crystallographic concepts. It would have been much better not to stand on ceremony with the author and to introduce correct definitions of these concepts everywhere.

There follow chapters on crystallographic projections and X-rays. The author endeavored to collect here material that may be of use to a radiographer.

A whole series of defects may be noted in Chapter 4, which deals with the question of X-ray diffraction. The diffraction indices are called on p. 105 the indices of the deflected beam; the angle in the Bragg-Wulff formula is called the angle of reflection (p. 107). The derivation of this equation from the Laue conditions is quite unsatisfactory.

Bibliography

The language of the translation is uneven and in places leaves one wishing for better. Why, for example, interference for reflection (100), and not with reflection (caption to Fig. 68). Or (p. 114) “two orders of reflection may be superposed into one spot”; would it not have been better to say “coalesce into one spot.”

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 set forth the methods of X-ray photography of Laue, rotation, and Debye. In all these chapters the experimental part is evaluated rather poorly (description of cameras, their details, methodological instructions concerning photography) and the parts relating to the explanation of the indexing of X-ray photographs are quite unimportant. In these chapters as well we find a number of inaccurate expressions. On p. 124 it is said that the plane \(hkl\) and the plane \(hk\bar{l}\) parallel to it give a reflection at one and the same spot.

On p. 13 it is erroneously said that “the nodes of the reciprocal lattice always form a simple space lattice.” On p. 141 we encounter yet another error. It is said: “all planes causing interference are represented by nodes... situated on a sphere of double radius...,” whereas it should be: inside a sphere of double radius. On p. 145 it is asserted that in the oscillation method, as also in the rotation method, the crystal is set so that a definite face is perpendicular to the ray, whereas for these methods it is important only that the axis of the crystal coincide with the axis of rotation or oscillation.

Disproportionately small is the chapter devoted to the method of photographing powders and plates. This is the principal method, having importance in metallography, and it should have been allotted 3–4 times as much space; while the methods of photographing single crystals, presented very weakly, could have been excluded, referring the reader to other literature. Especially regrettable is the extremely cursory exposition of the methods and theory of precision determination of parameters. The short chapter 8, “Determination of Crystal Structure,” concluding the general section, is unlikely to give the reader an idea of this field of structural analysis.

In Ch. 9 the method of constructing pole figures is explained. Here the author also discusses the determination of orientation in shapeless monocrystalline specimens. It is very good that the editor gives a reference to the small book by G. S. Zhdanov, where the method of constructing pole figures is set forth considerably more systematically and rigorously.

In Ch. 10 the determination of phase diagrams by the X-ray method is discussed.

Next begins the main, special, part of the book, containing very interesting material, set forth in detail with the inclusion of a large number of experimental data. Chapters 11–12 give information on the structure of metals and alloys. Chapter 13, adjoining these chapters, “Electron Theory of Metals and Alloys,” is written in a semi-popular style. One feels that the author knows the material presented rather poorly. There are also such phrases as, for example, “free electrons are connected with two opposite members, expressing the potential energy of the lattice” (p. 319), or “both electrons, being at the same energy level, must rotate in opposite directions” (p. 323).

The question of measuring stresses by means of X-rays is set forth in detail. A number of interesting examples are given. Much space is devoted to plastic deformation of metals, and a separate chapter is devoted to the theory of slip. There is a great deal of factual material, many references. For the metallurgist reader these are essential chapters, introducing him to the course of the subject. Here the author appears not as a compiler; it is evident that this field is the main field of the author’s scientific activity.

In the chapter “Structure of Cold-Worked Metal” the phenomena of asterism are set forth. Here too are considered those judgments that can be made about the structure of cold-worked metal from observations of the width and intensity of the lines of an X-ray photograph.

Bibliography

The next four chapters, of considerable length, are devoted to textures. Chapter 22 sets forth the phenomena of aging, and the concluding chapter discusses electron diffraction. It should be noted that this is a tradition of American authors: very briefly and indistinctly to discuss the phenomena of electron diffraction in books on X-ray analysis. In this case as well, apart from the most general presentation, this chapter can give the reader nothing. The book contains 9 appendices of a reference character. Included here is material on the structural analysis of crystals (determination of structure by the trial-and-error method), which the author did not venture to introduce into the main text. The advisability of presenting this material in the given book is open to doubt.

Our review shows that this book suffers from certain general shortcomings characteristic of American monographs, although it is the best of the books of this type known to us. We noted analogous shortcomings in the review of Sproull’s book (see UFN 35, 133 (1948)). The chief shortcoming is compilation, the dragging into the book of material from all neighboring fields in which the author is not a specialist. There is no doubt that the book by G. S. Zhdanov and Ya. S. Umanskii, X-ray Diffraction of Metals, is head and shoulders above the book under review. Moreover, Barrett’s book becomes good where he has to confine himself, so to speak, “closely” to X-ray Diffraction of Metals. Reading some pages, one becomes convinced of Barrett’s good acquaintance with the book by our authors.

Despite all its shortcomings, the translation of the book is far from useless. The editor rightly notes in the preface that books designed for metallurgists and setting forth the application of X-ray diffraction to the study of the structure of metals have long not appeared on the book market. The chapters that are of central interest to the metallurgist are written best and contain rich factual material.

The book has been issued on good paper; the line drawings have come out quite well. However, there are many misprints in the book, both noted and unnoted.

Special mention should be made of the treatment of the bibliographic references. The editorial board decided to follow the example of American and English publishing houses, which recognize only their own alphabet, and chose to give the transcription of bibliographic references in letters of the Russian alphabet. The result is quite wild, as might have been expected from such examples: Trans., AIME, Journ. Iron. Steel. Inst., Met. Tech., Journ. Applied... One may safely say that the reader will not decipher half the references, being unable to solve the rebus set for him by Metallurgizdat. The editorial board evidently translated these references into Russian on its own, without the participation of the scientific editor. This follows at least from the fact that one of the references (p. 29) has the following literal translation: “Burger. Crystallography of X-rays”! This annoying invention somewhat mars the book.

The editor has supplied the entire book throughout with references to works by Soviet scientists. This deserves every praise. At times this measure is not carried through to the end: when the name of a scientist in a given field is given, references to his most important works are not provided. In addition to these editorial notes, there is a significant number of references to Soviet works contained in the American edition. The general impression of the place of Soviet X-ray diffraction of metals in world science is a very solid one. This should be welcomed, and one must wish for the earliest possible appearance on our market of a new edition of the domestic X-ray Diffraction of Metals.

A. I. Kitaigorodskii