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Modern digital computers
Book Reviews experienced reader. It concerns "Human Beings and Their Machines" from the philosophical and sociological standpoint. A cryptic quotation follows: "Nothing in our society educates human beings to live; at best they are being trained to make a living. And at present they are being trained to make a living by performing tasks for which there will no longer be any need when they leave school." In this chapter are raised enough problems to keep the economists, sociologists and psychologists busy for the next decade on work of far more significance than subjecting pigeons or rats to the intricacies of complicated mazes. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book for the layman who is really concerned with our economic and sociological welfare. The philologists and semanticists will appreciate that nothing like computer technology imposes the requirement of definite meaning to language, expression, and logical deduction. The book concludes with nine pages of bibliographic references.
is a most valuable contribution to the field of elementary particle physics, for the expert researcher, graduate student, and the cauasl reader. The presentation is lively, stimulating and provocative. The material is presented with clarity and physical insight, and while complete and exhaustive, the book is easily read. Regrettably, the utility of this volume is somewhat marred for the serious student by misprints in the formulas, and it is hoped that these will be remedied in subsequent editions. MARTIN M. BLOCK
Department of Physics Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois MODERN DIGITAL COMPUTERS, by G. A. Maley and E. J. Skiko. 216 pages, diagrams, 6 X 9 in. Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964. Price, $10.00.
One wonders how a book like this comes to be written. The authors have tried to present National Academy of Sciences a primer of computer design and programming National Research Cauncil in 216 pages--a manifestly impossible task. Washington, D. C. They manage to produce a volume that will probably irritate anyone familiar with contemporary computers. Not only do they INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTARY choose a nearly obsolete computer, the 7090, PARTICLES,by J. J. Sakurai. 326 pages, dia- for their specific example, but they even emgrams, 6 X 9 in. Princeton, N. J., Princeton phasize its less pleasant idiosyncracies and University Press, 1964. Price, $8.50. imply that they are either desirable or inConservation laws historically have played evitable. (We learn, for example, that negaa major role in our development of physics. tive numbers ought to be stored as sign and Underlying conservation laws are the basic absolute value and that index registers arc symmetry operations. The philosophical ap- subtractive!) Only the IBM management proach used by Professor Sakurai in this book will be pleased. The book is far too parochial integrates the body of knowledge in elemen- for a text. The systems material includes the usual tary particle physics under the appropriate symmetry operations of rotation translation, treatment of binary arithmetic, half adder, inversion, change conjugation, time reversal, adders, and shifting registers that is available in several texts, including a good one done in etc. The beauty and depth of this monograph is 1950. The expositions of (part of) the order perhaps best described in the introductory ex- codes of the 7090 and the 7080 sound all too cerpt from C. N. Yang's Nobel Lecture: much like the machine programming manuals. "Nature seems to take advantage of the Even if those models were well-written, there simple mathematical representations of the is a difference between an expository text and symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider a legally precise document. The Fortran chapthe elegance and the beautiful perfection of ter is partly taken with acknowledgment, the mathematical reasoning involved and from IBM's own exposition--which is somecontrast it with the complex and far-reaching what more cheaply available. The book closes physical consequences, a deep sense of respect with a 12-page chapter on ideas alien to the for the power of the symmetry laws never 7090, including look-ahead, microprogramfails to develop." The result is a book which ruing, and read-only memories, as well as PAUL D. FOOTE
voL 279, No. 2, F ~ b . ~
~965
137
Book Reviews interrupt, control words, and tag-address memories. Data channels, a 7090 feature apparently introduced as an afterthought, also appears here. Authors aspiring to produce expository texts must learn to suppress detail. They must learn to build with ideas rather than with multitudinous facts. And it would help their expository clarity if they did not typically begin an otherwise good paragraph with the sentence "The answer is really quite simple and is based on the cold facts of life." FORM.AN S. ACTON
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Princeton University Princeton, N. J. ~NTERPLANETARYDYNAMICALPROCESSES, by E. N. Parker, 272 pages, diagrams, 51 X 9 in., New York, Interscience Publishers, 1963. Price, $12.50. The continuing development of our still rudimentary understanding of the mechanisms whereby the sun controls the environment of our planet constitutes one of the most fascinating stories in the history of science. We now know that the space around us, formerly regarded as a great void, is permeated by the "interplanetary medium," the intermediary through which, for example, the sun governs the population of energetic particles in the inner solar system. The hypothesis advanced by Chapman more than thirty years ago that corpuscular emissions associated with distinct solar eruptions (solar flares) produce geomagnetic storms, constituted the first recognition of the existence of interplanetary dynamical processes. The current concept of a continuous ejection of solar particles originally asserted qualitatively by Biermann in 1951, was first subjected to detailed theoretical investigation by Parker some years later. The author's qualifications to expound upon this subject are widely recognized in the scientific community. Indeed, he is the godfather of the solar wind. The idea that the solar corpuscular radiation is, indeed, a fluid, and that all the gases in interplanetary space are a supersonic extension of the steadily expanding solar corona, was pursued in depth by the author of this excellent monograph. This concise treatise is not an encyclopedic uncritical review of the great body of literature relating to the subject. Rather, it corn-
138
prises the author's own theory, invoking, however, the work of others when it is clearly pertinent to the presentation of a unified treatment of the hydrodynamic expansion of the atmosphere of the sun. Following a clear statement of the problem, and of its historical background, relevant observations as of the beginning of 1962 are surveyed. Although a substantial body of new experimental data has been accumulated since then, the basic observational knowledge summarized as a prelude to the theoretical development nevertheless remains valid. The kinetic properties of the coronal gases are considered first, since the solar atmosphere is, of course, the seat of interplanetary activity. I t follows that the corona is to be regarded as a hydrodynamic atmosphere rather than a corpuscular cloud. The traditional static models of the coronal atmosphere are then examined to illustrate why, in fact, the corona is expanding rather than static. It is next shown that the solution of the hydrodynamic equations accounting for the observed interplanetary activity is that for which the corona expands to supersonic velocities of several hundred kilometers per second at great distances from the sun under the throttling effect of the strong solar gravitational field. The resulting model of the quiet day corona and the solar wind is then constructed, and its consequences examined with respect to interplanetary magnetic fields, cosmic ray effects, and the propagation of energetic solar particles. The book concludes with a discussion of the more speculative question of the extent to which other stars give rise to stellar winds. If, indeed, there were some small points upon which one might comment adversely, they are not likely to appear in the present review, nor is this a consequence just of the profound esteem in which the reviewer holds the author. How can one follow any course other than to proclaim the praises of a book which, on the one hand, he has found contains much meat for his undergraduate students (albeit quite sophisticated ones) and, on the other, he and his colleagues have used in an analysis of their own and other experimental data? Especially, when the latter leads to the conclusion that, of the various theories that have been proposed to account for the modulation of the galactic cosmic ray intensity during the eleven-year solar cycle, only Parker's satisfactorily accounts for the results.
Journal of The Franklin Institute
is a most valuable contribution to the field of elementary particle physics, for the expert researcher, graduate student, and the cauasl reader. The presentation is lively, stimulating and provocative. The material is presented with clarity and physical insight, and while complete and exhaustive, the book is easily read. Regrettably, the utility of this volume is somewhat marred for the serious student by misprints in the formulas, and it is hoped that these will be remedied in subsequent editions. MARTIN M. BLOCK
Department of Physics Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois MODERN DIGITAL COMPUTERS, by G. A. Maley and E. J. Skiko. 216 pages, diagrams, 6 X 9 in. Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964. Price, $10.00.
One wonders how a book like this comes to be written. The authors have tried to present National Academy of Sciences a primer of computer design and programming National Research Cauncil in 216 pages--a manifestly impossible task. Washington, D. C. They manage to produce a volume that will probably irritate anyone familiar with contemporary computers. Not only do they INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTARY choose a nearly obsolete computer, the 7090, PARTICLES,by J. J. Sakurai. 326 pages, dia- for their specific example, but they even emgrams, 6 X 9 in. Princeton, N. J., Princeton phasize its less pleasant idiosyncracies and University Press, 1964. Price, $8.50. imply that they are either desirable or inConservation laws historically have played evitable. (We learn, for example, that negaa major role in our development of physics. tive numbers ought to be stored as sign and Underlying conservation laws are the basic absolute value and that index registers arc symmetry operations. The philosophical ap- subtractive!) Only the IBM management proach used by Professor Sakurai in this book will be pleased. The book is far too parochial integrates the body of knowledge in elemen- for a text. The systems material includes the usual tary particle physics under the appropriate symmetry operations of rotation translation, treatment of binary arithmetic, half adder, inversion, change conjugation, time reversal, adders, and shifting registers that is available in several texts, including a good one done in etc. The beauty and depth of this monograph is 1950. The expositions of (part of) the order perhaps best described in the introductory ex- codes of the 7090 and the 7080 sound all too cerpt from C. N. Yang's Nobel Lecture: much like the machine programming manuals. "Nature seems to take advantage of the Even if those models were well-written, there simple mathematical representations of the is a difference between an expository text and symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider a legally precise document. The Fortran chapthe elegance and the beautiful perfection of ter is partly taken with acknowledgment, the mathematical reasoning involved and from IBM's own exposition--which is somecontrast it with the complex and far-reaching what more cheaply available. The book closes physical consequences, a deep sense of respect with a 12-page chapter on ideas alien to the for the power of the symmetry laws never 7090, including look-ahead, microprogramfails to develop." The result is a book which ruing, and read-only memories, as well as PAUL D. FOOTE
voL 279, No. 2, F ~ b . ~
~965
137
Book Reviews interrupt, control words, and tag-address memories. Data channels, a 7090 feature apparently introduced as an afterthought, also appears here. Authors aspiring to produce expository texts must learn to suppress detail. They must learn to build with ideas rather than with multitudinous facts. And it would help their expository clarity if they did not typically begin an otherwise good paragraph with the sentence "The answer is really quite simple and is based on the cold facts of life." FORM.AN S. ACTON
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Princeton University Princeton, N. J. ~NTERPLANETARYDYNAMICALPROCESSES, by E. N. Parker, 272 pages, diagrams, 51 X 9 in., New York, Interscience Publishers, 1963. Price, $12.50. The continuing development of our still rudimentary understanding of the mechanisms whereby the sun controls the environment of our planet constitutes one of the most fascinating stories in the history of science. We now know that the space around us, formerly regarded as a great void, is permeated by the "interplanetary medium," the intermediary through which, for example, the sun governs the population of energetic particles in the inner solar system. The hypothesis advanced by Chapman more than thirty years ago that corpuscular emissions associated with distinct solar eruptions (solar flares) produce geomagnetic storms, constituted the first recognition of the existence of interplanetary dynamical processes. The current concept of a continuous ejection of solar particles originally asserted qualitatively by Biermann in 1951, was first subjected to detailed theoretical investigation by Parker some years later. The author's qualifications to expound upon this subject are widely recognized in the scientific community. Indeed, he is the godfather of the solar wind. The idea that the solar corpuscular radiation is, indeed, a fluid, and that all the gases in interplanetary space are a supersonic extension of the steadily expanding solar corona, was pursued in depth by the author of this excellent monograph. This concise treatise is not an encyclopedic uncritical review of the great body of literature relating to the subject. Rather, it corn-
138
prises the author's own theory, invoking, however, the work of others when it is clearly pertinent to the presentation of a unified treatment of the hydrodynamic expansion of the atmosphere of the sun. Following a clear statement of the problem, and of its historical background, relevant observations as of the beginning of 1962 are surveyed. Although a substantial body of new experimental data has been accumulated since then, the basic observational knowledge summarized as a prelude to the theoretical development nevertheless remains valid. The kinetic properties of the coronal gases are considered first, since the solar atmosphere is, of course, the seat of interplanetary activity. I t follows that the corona is to be regarded as a hydrodynamic atmosphere rather than a corpuscular cloud. The traditional static models of the coronal atmosphere are then examined to illustrate why, in fact, the corona is expanding rather than static. It is next shown that the solution of the hydrodynamic equations accounting for the observed interplanetary activity is that for which the corona expands to supersonic velocities of several hundred kilometers per second at great distances from the sun under the throttling effect of the strong solar gravitational field. The resulting model of the quiet day corona and the solar wind is then constructed, and its consequences examined with respect to interplanetary magnetic fields, cosmic ray effects, and the propagation of energetic solar particles. The book concludes with a discussion of the more speculative question of the extent to which other stars give rise to stellar winds. If, indeed, there were some small points upon which one might comment adversely, they are not likely to appear in the present review, nor is this a consequence just of the profound esteem in which the reviewer holds the author. How can one follow any course other than to proclaim the praises of a book which, on the one hand, he has found contains much meat for his undergraduate students (albeit quite sophisticated ones) and, on the other, he and his colleagues have used in an analysis of their own and other experimental data? Especially, when the latter leads to the conclusion that, of the various theories that have been proposed to account for the modulation of the galactic cosmic ray intensity during the eleven-year solar cycle, only Parker's satisfactorily accounts for the results.
Journal of The Franklin Institute