Atomic Structure of Minerals

Abstract

THOUGH only twenty-five years have elapsed since in June 1912 the interference phenomena of X-rays on crystals were discovered by M. von Laue and his collaborators, experimentally determined atomic arrangements are to-day available in sufficient number to form the subject-matter of a notable book. This advance has to a large extent been the result of work carried out in the laboratories of Sir William Bragg and of Prof. W. L. Bragg, and mineralogists will be grateful to the latter for having given them a first-hand and illuminating account of the results achieved. Prof. Bragg's book shows clearly, as do in a more detailed fashion the "Strukturberichte“published by the Zeitschrift für Kristallographie, the amazing extent to which crystallography has been developed by the united researches of physicists, chemists and mineralogists. A single new method of experimental investigation has served not merely to solve—or at least to define more clearly—a multitude of old problems, but also by opening up entirely new vistas has enabled many questions not thought of hitherto to be precisely formulated.

Atomic Structure of Minerals

By Prof. W. L. Bragg. (The George Fisher Baker Non-resident Lectureship in Chemistry at Cornell University). Pp. xiii + 292. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1937.) 18s. net.