AN ELEMENTARY SURVEY OF MODERN PHYSICS
By Professor Gordon Ferrie Hull. Macmillan Company, p. 457. $4.50.
Many times has the physicist been accused of extreme selfishness, a professional reticence which not only warned away the trespassers but neglected to invite visitors. Whatever may have been the truth of the charges, recent procedure has almost gone to the other extreme. There are numerous more or less recent books, some of them actually approaching "best seller" notoriety, which present to the general public various aspects of the astonishing developments in physics since the beginning of what has been termed the "modern period." On the whole no great damage has been done, but insofar as the layman has been led either to exchange one set of fixed ideas for another just as restricted, or, ab initio, to adopt as final and complete a popularized account of work still in progress, to that extent no service has been rendered to anyone.
If with these opinions one reads Professor Hull's new book, "An Elementary Survey of Modern Physics/' he will find no cause for alarm. While the word "elementary" is quite appropriate in view of the vast range of modern research, it should be understood that the author makes no attempt to write down to the level of an individual whose equipment in physics consists of a hazy recollection of a few misunderstood formulas or who is unwilling to permit his mental processes to be urged out of a complacent routine. Yet it is not written for physicists, and is not filled with rigorous mathematical proofs and tedious technical details. It is an honest effort to present accurately the simpler phases of the many activities of the physicists of today to the man who really wishes to know something about the situation.
This book is quite clearly the work of a real individual, probably many of his former students would recognize the author within fifty pages. And the author is certainly aware of the difficulties which beset him, so in his presentation of material he is the sympathetic friend who perhaps might prefer to be more exacting, yet because he is quite anxious to have more people appreciate the fun he is having, does not hesitate to use understandable language.
