Two new books on terrestrial magnetism and electricity: a review and a review

Abstract

There has been published recently (August 1939) a volume on “Terrestrial magnetism and electricity” which is the latest and largest (778 pages) of a series 1 issued under the general title “The physics of the Earth.” All of them were prepared under the direction of committees of the National Research Council (U.S.A.); the first six volumes were published as Bulletins of that Council. The purpose underlying this scheme, initiated in 1926, was “to give to the reader, presumably a scientist but not a specialist in the subject, an idea of its present status together with a forward‐looking summary of its outstanding problems,” in view of the “considerable development of interest in geophysics, ... not. matched by the publication in English of systematic treatises on the subject” (Foreword).In terrestrial magnetism and electricty the lack of such a treatise has been, and is, a decided handicap to American and British workers in the subject; I hope that the present war will not prevent the expected publication, this year, of the treatise “Geomagnetism” which has been in preparation since 1927, in collaboration (since 1929) with J. Barrels. It seems appropriate, if unusual, to refer to this forthcoming treatise in the present review, and to make some comments on the relation in which the two books will stand to each other. Certainly if their success is at all commensurate with the long period (over a sunspot‐cycle!) occupied by their preparation, English‐speaking geophysicists and physicists will gain an altogether new ease of access to the hitherto somewhat veiled arcana of earth magnetism and electricity.