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Chemistry of the Solar System
321 tively high price, I cannot recommend it for purchase by individuals but it should be an indispensible item in the libraries at all places where air pollution research is carried out. John H. Seinfeld, Pasadena, Calif.
H.E. Suess, 1987. Chemistry of the Solar System. John Wiley and Sons, 143 pp., US$24.20. This monograph is based on lectures given by Hans Suess at the University of California, San Diego, in the period 1968-1985. The book is subtitled An Elementary Introduction to Cosmochemistry. The book is divided into two main sections. The first half is concerned with nuclear structure and the origin of the elements. The second half, labelled c o s m o c h e m i c a l processes, describes the chemistry of the primordial nebula, and the meteorites, asteroids, comets and planets are briefly treated. This book covers the topics that Hans Suess knows best. In the early part there is a semihistorical discussion of the development of ideas concerning the chemical abundances, followed by an excellent discussion of element abundances, the underlying nuclear systematics, and the basic nuclear physics. Suess spends some time on the work of nuclear structure and the magic numbers, work done independently by Maria Mayer, and by Haxel, Jensen and Suess. There are many who feel that Suess was unfairly left out when Maria Mayer, and J.H.D. Jensen shared with E. Wigner the Nobel Prize for 1963. Suess has made major contributions to the work on the regularities found in isotopic composition. His work on the element abundance in meteoritic material was most important as he attempted to estimate the magnitude of the cosmochemical fractionation processes and thus derived truly primeval abundances. This work, first carried out in the late 1940's, was revised and published again in the famous paper by Suess
and Harold Urey in 1956 in Reviews of Modern Physics. The paper was a landmark for those of us who were trying to understand the origin of the elements at that time. Suess gives an account of this work and then moves on to element synthesis describing the early work and culminating in the well known theory of BZFH, published in 1957, which is now generally accepted. I have little complaint about this section, except that A.G.W. Cameron should have been mentioned, and that my name is wrongly spelled - - a s is often the case. In his discussion of the chemistry of the primordial material out of which the solar system condensed, Suess starts with the fact that there is near constancy of the isotopic composition of almost all of the elements in the earth and the meteorites, and the sun, etc. According to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, this material is made up of components which have gone through several different types of nuclear process. He then discusses the types of isotope variations to be expected under the headings--primeval isotope effects, radiogenic effects, isotope effects, cosmogenic isotope effects and chemical effects. He then discusses the large anomalies in hydrogen and to a lesser extent in oxygen, and other less striking cases which, in some cases, are still hard to explain. Later he discusses the condensation sequence, carbon, and the formation of prebiotic substances. The last section~ entitled The Members of the Solar System, is very sketchy and a much more detailed description would be required in my opinion, for a graduate course. This is not really a textbook. Suess writes well about the subjects he knows best, but little or no attempt has been made to fill in the gaps. The major omission is that little is said about the astrophysics of the solar system and modern views of its origin. Often the material is dated, and there is little evidence throughout the book that Suess has kept up with the literature. Only 19 out of 145 references in the book are dated 1980 or later.
322
However, I recommend this book to those who are interested in this field. Hans Suess is one of its pioneers and the book reflects this. Geoffrey Burbidge, San Diego, Calif.
Geodesy H. S~nkel (Editor), 1986. Mathematical and Numerical Techniques in Physical Geodesy. Volume 1, Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, Springer, Berlin, 548 pp., DM88.00 (soft cover). This volume contains notes of lectures given at the fourth of the series of "International Summer Schools in the Mountains on Mathematical and Numerical Techniques in Physical Geodesy", held from 5 August to 5 September in Admont, Austria. The lecturers were drawn from the leading researchers in the physical geodesy community, so the participants at the Summer School, and now the readers of this book have the benefit of being exposed to some important and current developments taking place in this discipline. The volume is divided into two parts. Part A deals with the mathematical tools being adapted to handle problems in physical geodesy. The first topic, presented by Tscherning, focuses on the applications of functional analysis to geodesy and, particularly, in its use of geophysical data (e.g. density distributions) in estimating the parameters defining the geopotential field. The approach is methodical and systematic, covering linear vector spaces, dual spaces, norms and inner products; Hilbert spaces and reproducing kernels, and approximations in Hilbert spaces; the choice of base functions and inner products and concludes with a discussion of the author's preferred technique. This presentation states rather than derives proofs of theorems (references for proofs are provided), throughout and gives examples to reinforce or develop the principle.
A similar approach (i.e. a definition, followed by remarks) is adopted by Sanso in the second set of notes, titled Statistical Methods in Physical Geodesy. These notes cover some common ground with those preceding them, but the material is treated with the author's own special emphasis. Topics covered include a review of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces; observation equations and their linearization; optimum criteria and the hybrid norm principle; the stochastic interpretation of collocation; invariance principles and random fields; and applications to harmonic fields. The notes and examples are extensive, filling 82 pages, and are followed by two appendices reviewing properties of Hilbert spaces and random distribution processes on a sphere. Whereas the previous lectures assume a good appreciation of the topics under discussion, the third set, prepared by HofmannWellenhof and Moritz, have no such requirement. Entitled Introduction to Spectral Analysis, it goes right back to basics, and in a few pages reviews, clearly and carefully (although deliberately heuristically rather than rigorously), how Stokes' formulae can be regarded in the spectral domain, and how Fourier series and Fourier transforms are developed. After describing convolution, the lectures concentrate on some possible applications of the foregoing in physical geodesy. They then deal with Hankel transforms; the covariance function and its spectrum; collocation in the frequency domain and Discrete (and Fast) Fourier Transforms. The foregoing primer takes 63 pages, and is followed by an appendix which gives helpful numerical examples and supplementary development of the material in the lecture notes. Part B concentrates on techniques used to solve various problems or handle observational developments in contemporary physical geodesy. These include Colombo: mapping the earth's gravity field using satellite tracking data; Rummel: satellite gradiometry and its use in defining the earth's gravity field; Rapp: the analysis of the global geopotential field and the development of geo-
H.E. Suess, 1987. Chemistry of the Solar System. John Wiley and Sons, 143 pp., US$24.20. This monograph is based on lectures given by Hans Suess at the University of California, San Diego, in the period 1968-1985. The book is subtitled An Elementary Introduction to Cosmochemistry. The book is divided into two main sections. The first half is concerned with nuclear structure and the origin of the elements. The second half, labelled c o s m o c h e m i c a l processes, describes the chemistry of the primordial nebula, and the meteorites, asteroids, comets and planets are briefly treated. This book covers the topics that Hans Suess knows best. In the early part there is a semihistorical discussion of the development of ideas concerning the chemical abundances, followed by an excellent discussion of element abundances, the underlying nuclear systematics, and the basic nuclear physics. Suess spends some time on the work of nuclear structure and the magic numbers, work done independently by Maria Mayer, and by Haxel, Jensen and Suess. There are many who feel that Suess was unfairly left out when Maria Mayer, and J.H.D. Jensen shared with E. Wigner the Nobel Prize for 1963. Suess has made major contributions to the work on the regularities found in isotopic composition. His work on the element abundance in meteoritic material was most important as he attempted to estimate the magnitude of the cosmochemical fractionation processes and thus derived truly primeval abundances. This work, first carried out in the late 1940's, was revised and published again in the famous paper by Suess
and Harold Urey in 1956 in Reviews of Modern Physics. The paper was a landmark for those of us who were trying to understand the origin of the elements at that time. Suess gives an account of this work and then moves on to element synthesis describing the early work and culminating in the well known theory of BZFH, published in 1957, which is now generally accepted. I have little complaint about this section, except that A.G.W. Cameron should have been mentioned, and that my name is wrongly spelled - - a s is often the case. In his discussion of the chemistry of the primordial material out of which the solar system condensed, Suess starts with the fact that there is near constancy of the isotopic composition of almost all of the elements in the earth and the meteorites, and the sun, etc. According to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, this material is made up of components which have gone through several different types of nuclear process. He then discusses the types of isotope variations to be expected under the headings--primeval isotope effects, radiogenic effects, isotope effects, cosmogenic isotope effects and chemical effects. He then discusses the large anomalies in hydrogen and to a lesser extent in oxygen, and other less striking cases which, in some cases, are still hard to explain. Later he discusses the condensation sequence, carbon, and the formation of prebiotic substances. The last section~ entitled The Members of the Solar System, is very sketchy and a much more detailed description would be required in my opinion, for a graduate course. This is not really a textbook. Suess writes well about the subjects he knows best, but little or no attempt has been made to fill in the gaps. The major omission is that little is said about the astrophysics of the solar system and modern views of its origin. Often the material is dated, and there is little evidence throughout the book that Suess has kept up with the literature. Only 19 out of 145 references in the book are dated 1980 or later.
322
However, I recommend this book to those who are interested in this field. Hans Suess is one of its pioneers and the book reflects this. Geoffrey Burbidge, San Diego, Calif.
Geodesy H. S~nkel (Editor), 1986. Mathematical and Numerical Techniques in Physical Geodesy. Volume 1, Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, Springer, Berlin, 548 pp., DM88.00 (soft cover). This volume contains notes of lectures given at the fourth of the series of "International Summer Schools in the Mountains on Mathematical and Numerical Techniques in Physical Geodesy", held from 5 August to 5 September in Admont, Austria. The lecturers were drawn from the leading researchers in the physical geodesy community, so the participants at the Summer School, and now the readers of this book have the benefit of being exposed to some important and current developments taking place in this discipline. The volume is divided into two parts. Part A deals with the mathematical tools being adapted to handle problems in physical geodesy. The first topic, presented by Tscherning, focuses on the applications of functional analysis to geodesy and, particularly, in its use of geophysical data (e.g. density distributions) in estimating the parameters defining the geopotential field. The approach is methodical and systematic, covering linear vector spaces, dual spaces, norms and inner products; Hilbert spaces and reproducing kernels, and approximations in Hilbert spaces; the choice of base functions and inner products and concludes with a discussion of the author's preferred technique. This presentation states rather than derives proofs of theorems (references for proofs are provided), throughout and gives examples to reinforce or develop the principle.
A similar approach (i.e. a definition, followed by remarks) is adopted by Sanso in the second set of notes, titled Statistical Methods in Physical Geodesy. These notes cover some common ground with those preceding them, but the material is treated with the author's own special emphasis. Topics covered include a review of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces; observation equations and their linearization; optimum criteria and the hybrid norm principle; the stochastic interpretation of collocation; invariance principles and random fields; and applications to harmonic fields. The notes and examples are extensive, filling 82 pages, and are followed by two appendices reviewing properties of Hilbert spaces and random distribution processes on a sphere. Whereas the previous lectures assume a good appreciation of the topics under discussion, the third set, prepared by HofmannWellenhof and Moritz, have no such requirement. Entitled Introduction to Spectral Analysis, it goes right back to basics, and in a few pages reviews, clearly and carefully (although deliberately heuristically rather than rigorously), how Stokes' formulae can be regarded in the spectral domain, and how Fourier series and Fourier transforms are developed. After describing convolution, the lectures concentrate on some possible applications of the foregoing in physical geodesy. They then deal with Hankel transforms; the covariance function and its spectrum; collocation in the frequency domain and Discrete (and Fast) Fourier Transforms. The foregoing primer takes 63 pages, and is followed by an appendix which gives helpful numerical examples and supplementary development of the material in the lecture notes. Part B concentrates on techniques used to solve various problems or handle observational developments in contemporary physical geodesy. These include Colombo: mapping the earth's gravity field using satellite tracking data; Rummel: satellite gradiometry and its use in defining the earth's gravity field; Rapp: the analysis of the global geopotential field and the development of geo-