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New studies in crystallography and crystal chemistry. Abridged translations and abstracts of foreign works, prepared by G. D. Vidgorich, A. S. Anishchikina, B. V. Nenant, T. L. Khodyakova, V. M. Kozhiny, N. D. Katsenelenbaum, Yu. G. Zagalskaya, N. A. Pobedishskaya, and others, under the general editorship and with prefaces by Prof. G. B. Bokii. Publishing House of Foreign Literature.

Collection 1 — “Crystal Growth,” 146 pp., 47 figs., 1950, 6 rubles 85 kopecks.
Collection 2 — “Crystal Growth,” 112 pp., 27 figs., 1950, 5 rubles 50 kopecks.
Collection 3 — “Crystal Structures,” 168 pp., 19 figs., 1951, 8 rubles 35 kopecks.
Collection 4 — “Crystal Structures,” 310 pp., 116 figs., 1951, 13 rubles 50 kopecks.

The first four collections of a new series of abridged translations and abstracts on crystallography and crystal chemistry, issued in 1950–1951, were undertaken by the Scientific Information Department of the Publishing House of Foreign Literature in order to acquaint the Soviet reader with the latest work in this field abroad.

There is no doubt that the need for this kind of publication is keenly felt by an ever-growing circle of Soviet researchers—crystallographers, mineralogists, geologists, chemists, physicists, technologists, as well as production engineers—who in their everyday scientific and practical activity constantly encounter problems of crystallography.

The first two collections are devoted to questions of crystallogenesis. As material for compiling these two collections, the editor has successfully used papers and discussions on various questions of the formation and growth of crystals, published in the Transactions of the Faraday Society in 1950 as a separate volume of 365 pages.

The material of these first two collections is divided into four sections:

1. Theories of crystal growth.
2. Formation of nuclei and normal growth.
3. Anomalous and modified growth.
4. Synthesis of minerals and its technical significance. Closely connected with this section are two articles devoted to the synthesis of quartz and mullite which, probably for technical reasons, were included in the third issue.

Each section, besides abstracts of papers, contains brief results of the discussions: critical remarks, questions, and answers to them.

The third and fourth collections contain abstracts of works by foreign authors on the determination of crystal structures by the method of X-ray analysis over the last twelve years. The third collection brings together structural studies from 1940 to 1946, and the fourth—from 1947 to 1950. Both issues contain translations of the annual surveys and bibliographies of works on the study of the structure of crystals, printed in the annual volumes of the English Chemical Society for 1940–1950. In addition, the third collection includes an abridged translation of the work

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. K. Crowfoot and others, devoted to the X-ray investigation of the crystal structure of penicillin, and in the fourth collection abstracts are given of most structural works published abroad in 1949—1950.

This last section of the fourth collection constitutes its main content (280 pp.—approximately 9/10 of the whole book). It contains abstracts of structural works on simple substances (chapter 2), intermetallic compounds (chapter 3), inorganic compounds, among which structural investigations of minerals are assigned to a separate paragraph (chapter 4), and organic compounds (chapter 5). In almost all abstracts the methods of photographing crystals and the method used for deciphering the structure are indicated. In addition, sufficiently complete descriptions of new structural types are given, with preservation of all digital material present in the original articles (dimensions of unit cells, atomic coordinates, interatomic distances, names of Fedorov space groups, certain physical properties of crystals that follow from the structure, etc.). Projections of the structure and other graphical materials present in the originals are also provided.

Thus, the four collections New Investigations in Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry issued over the last two years truly give the Soviet reader the opportunity to become quickly acquainted with the latest foreign works on crystallogenesis and on the determination of new crystal structures. This is their principal value.

The collective, headed by Prof. G. B. Bokii, has carried out a great deal of work, which gives a brief account of the very latest foreign works. One would wish that the Publishing House of Foreign Literature would continue the publication of this important and necessary series. At the same time, it is necessary to note certain shortcomings of the edition under review.

1. In individual articles contained in the reviewed collections, obsolete or even incorrect foreign data are set out without any explanations, whereas we now have newer and more correct domestic materials on this question.

For example, when giving the incorrect structural determinations of tourmaline by Donnay and Buerger (collection IV, pp. 215—217), ilvaite by Takeuchi (collection IV, p. 219), epidote by Ito (collection IV, p. 24), the author in the foreword says nothing about new works on the study of the structure of some of these minerals, carried out recently in our country by N. V. Belov and his pupils. It was hardly advisable, in this connection, to give abstracts of incorrect foreign articles. In the same case, if for some reason the editor considered it advisable to place abstracts of erroneous works in the collections, it was necessary immediately to indicate wherein the erroneousness of these works lay, and to give references to domestic publications where new data on the structures of tourmaline and ilvaite are presented. In the same way, when citing Ito’s data on the structure of epidote, it should have been indicated that weighty considerations of V. S. Sobolev and N. V. Belov on the defectiveness of this work had been published in our periodical press*).

A second example of an uncritical exposition of the material is the section of the first collection of the series where questions of crystal growth are discussed and, in particular, the question of the layer-by-layer growth of a crystal (article by Bunn and Emmett, collection 1, p. 89), as well as individual passages of the second issue devoted to the method of growing crystals from solutions.

) V. Sobolev, On the structure of epidote and other works by Ito on the structure of silicates. Mineralogical Collection of the Lviv Geological Society, No. 3, pp. 219—220 (1949); N. V. Belov, Essays on structural mineralogy. Mineralogical Collection of the Lviv Geological Society*, No. 5, pp. 30—36 (1951).

It seems to us that here, too, the editor should have pointed to the principal domestic works devoted to these questions, especially since English authors, as a rule, do not refer to them and present individual achievements of our native crystallography as their own.*

This shortcoming of New Studies in Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry is also characteristic of other analogous publications of the Administration for Scientific Information of the Foreign Literature Publishing House.

1. The collections provide abstracts and abridged accounts of various original works and reviews in crystallography and crystal chemistry.

A publication of this kind requires great attention and a sense of proportion on the part of the editor, so as not to turn the published articles into abstracts inaccessible to the reader, requiring, for their deciphering, the study of the original articles. In general, the editor has coped well with his task and, in a relatively small number of sheets, has included a very large amount of material. At the same time, it should be noted that some articles have been subjected to such excessive abridgment that the essential content set forth in them has become inaccessible to the reader. Thus, for example, in the article by J. D. H. Donnay, “Multiple and Oriented Overgrowth” (collection II, pp. 11–16), devoted to the question of the structural nature of regular intergrowths of crystals, the editor removed, in translation, the tables containing all the factual material on intergrowths. Thereby this article was deprived of the basic factual information confirming the author’s conclusions, and in order to understand the material presented in it the reader will have to turn to the original English work.

Similar not entirely successful excessive abridgments are found in some other places in the collections under review.

1. Abstracts of special articles require especially great attention to terminology. On the whole, the editorial board has coped well with this difficult task, but nevertheless certain shortcomings should be pointed out here.

Thus, for example, in Buckley’s article “Change in Crystal Habit with the Introduction of Impurities” (collection II, p. 32), the term “sand-clock structures,” well known to the Russian reader, has for some reason been replaced in a number of places (pp. 34, 39, etc.) by the new and incomprehensible term “hourglass structures.” The term “oriented overgrowth” (collection II, p. 11) does not sound altogether successful either.

In conclusion, it is necessary once again to note that Prof. G. B. Bokii and his collaborators have performed a large and useful task in preparing the four collections under review.

We think that the comments made above will help the compilers of the collections and the editorial board of the Administration for Scientific Information of the Foreign Literature Publishing House to introduce certain improvements into subsequent issues of the reviewed series New Studies in Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry. This will enable the Soviet reader to assess the published material correctly and at once to recognize its objective value.

One would like to wish that the publication New Studies in Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry become a regularly appearing periodical publication of the Foreign Literature Publishing House.

* See on this the article by O. M. Ansheles, “On the Growth of Crystals from Solutions and Layer-by-Layer Accretion of Faces (in Connection with Foreign Works),” Transactions of the All-Union Mineralogical Society, 2nd series, part LXXXI, no. 2, pp. 151–154 (1952).

V. A. Frank-Kamenetskii