- Email: [email protected]
Structure and Dynamics — An Atomic View of Materials
BOOKS & MEDIA UPDATE
Structure and Dynamics – An Atomic View of Materials
Changing face of a genius
Martin T. Dove
An examination of the changing reputation of Newton down the centuries, this book reveals how the figure we recognize reflects our culture, our time, and our ideas about scientific endeavor, says Jim Bennett.
Oxford University Press (2003), 356 pp., ISBN: 0-19-850678-3 $40 / £24.95
This new release in the Oxford Master Series in Condensed Matter Physics is intended to bridge the gap between undergraduate textbooks and current research activities. It covers the relationships between interatomic forces, crystal structure, lattice dynamics, and material properties. It includes descriptions of experimental methods, tutorial material, and a number of explanatory appendices.
Electronic Structure and Magnetism of Complex Materials D. J. Singh and D. A. Papaconstantopoulos (eds.) Springer-Verlag (2003), 326 pp., ISBN: 3-540-43382-1 $89.95 / 79.95
Consisting of a series of review articles, this book links developments in electronic structure theory to a greater understanding of technologically important magnetic materials. It includes articles on the interplay of orbital, spin, and lattice orderings in complex oxides; transport theories for layered systems; and the theory of magnetic interactions in doped semiconductors.
Carbon Alloys Eiichi Yasuda, et al. (eds.) Elsevier (2003), 580 pp., ISBN: 0-08-044163-7 $170 / 170
The term ‘carbon alloys’ describes materials mainly composed of carbon in multi-component systems. This work presents the results of a comprehensive, Japanese-funded study into these materials. It considers carbon alloy structure, processing, characterization techniques, applications, and also future developments in the field.
Expert Graduate Undergraduate
The juxtaposition of ‘Newton’ and ‘spin’ will probably direct reader’s thoughts towards the mathematical treatment of mechanical questions – not so in this book, which links Newton’s reputation to the sense of ‘spin’ more familiar in modern-day politics and public relations. This is not so much a book about Newton, though it does contain an outline biography, as an account of how he has been viewed down the centuries since his death. How, in fact, he has been reconstructed or remade by succeeding generations of admirers and detractors. It is a thorough, well-researched, and soundly scholarly account, but at the same time it is readily accessible for a general, interested audience. ‘Interested’ is an important qualification: this is probably not a book to offer to someone out of the blue as general reading. The historical examples follow each other at a marching pace that requires some stamina on the reader’s part, but the author has been careful not to require an extensive historical or technical background. Everything you need to follow the narrative is available within the covers, while the text is enlivened by a good selection of images. We learn how Newton’s reputation, and even the contents of his biography, have been revised since his death, and how those who have represented him in words and images have shaped and selected them to suit their own ends and assumptions. In case we fondly imagine that our own age will emerge with a more candid and honest appreciation, the author sustains her thesis to our own time: “The modern focus on Newton as a scientific hero owes much to the cumulative effects of 300 years of media manipulation.” This historical analysis sits in parallel with a similarly contextualized characterization of science itself, where “accounts that celebrated science’s progressive march towards the truth ... now seem too simplistic and triumphal.” Science, like our image of Newton, has been affected by “social, political, economic, and religious constraints”, so that the subject of this book is much
broader than it might at first appear: “The story of Newton’s shifting reputations is inseparable from the rise of science itself.” Newtonian iconography is unpacked in an illuminating way, through portraits, busts, medals, prints, and statues, and this includes Newton’s own management of his image until his death. His 18th century reputation is traced through his ‘disciples’ and his ‘enemies’, though even the disciples, such as William Whiston, George Cheyne, and John Desaguliers, modified and manipulated their inheritance, and some, such as Immanuel Kant and Leonhard Euler, who demurred and challenged aspects of Newton’s work, were not antagonistic to the whole. Meanwhile, interest in Newton’s alchemy and biblical chronology and prophesy fluctuated according to intellectual fashion. There is an illuminating chapter of the shifting notion of ‘genius’ and the prominent part Newton’s reputation has played in this story. Under ‘Myths’, familiar anecdotes about Newton are examined for their use as parables of virtue, while under ‘Shrines’, we encounter places of pilgrimage and objects of veneration, learning that the relics of science are respected every bit Patricia Fara Newton: The Making of Genius (2002), 384 pp., Columbia University Press (US), ISBN: 0-231-12806-1, $29.95 Pan Macmillan (UK), ISBN: 0-333-90735-3, £20
as much as those of religion. The story is brought up to the present with the revisionist accounts of historians and the imaginative plots of novelists. This is a fine book, one that challenges notions of scientific reputation, their foundation, and validity. The message is not at all that Newton’s reputation should be undermined or belittled, but rather that we can begin to understand how we and others see, and have seen, him only by looking at the historical, intellectual, and cultural contexts in which these assessments are made and propagated. Jim Bennett is the director of the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.
June 2003
59
Structure and Dynamics – An Atomic View of Materials
Changing face of a genius
Martin T. Dove
An examination of the changing reputation of Newton down the centuries, this book reveals how the figure we recognize reflects our culture, our time, and our ideas about scientific endeavor, says Jim Bennett.
Oxford University Press (2003), 356 pp., ISBN: 0-19-850678-3 $40 / £24.95
This new release in the Oxford Master Series in Condensed Matter Physics is intended to bridge the gap between undergraduate textbooks and current research activities. It covers the relationships between interatomic forces, crystal structure, lattice dynamics, and material properties. It includes descriptions of experimental methods, tutorial material, and a number of explanatory appendices.
Electronic Structure and Magnetism of Complex Materials D. J. Singh and D. A. Papaconstantopoulos (eds.) Springer-Verlag (2003), 326 pp., ISBN: 3-540-43382-1 $89.95 / 79.95
Consisting of a series of review articles, this book links developments in electronic structure theory to a greater understanding of technologically important magnetic materials. It includes articles on the interplay of orbital, spin, and lattice orderings in complex oxides; transport theories for layered systems; and the theory of magnetic interactions in doped semiconductors.
Carbon Alloys Eiichi Yasuda, et al. (eds.) Elsevier (2003), 580 pp., ISBN: 0-08-044163-7 $170 / 170
The term ‘carbon alloys’ describes materials mainly composed of carbon in multi-component systems. This work presents the results of a comprehensive, Japanese-funded study into these materials. It considers carbon alloy structure, processing, characterization techniques, applications, and also future developments in the field.
Expert Graduate Undergraduate
The juxtaposition of ‘Newton’ and ‘spin’ will probably direct reader’s thoughts towards the mathematical treatment of mechanical questions – not so in this book, which links Newton’s reputation to the sense of ‘spin’ more familiar in modern-day politics and public relations. This is not so much a book about Newton, though it does contain an outline biography, as an account of how he has been viewed down the centuries since his death. How, in fact, he has been reconstructed or remade by succeeding generations of admirers and detractors. It is a thorough, well-researched, and soundly scholarly account, but at the same time it is readily accessible for a general, interested audience. ‘Interested’ is an important qualification: this is probably not a book to offer to someone out of the blue as general reading. The historical examples follow each other at a marching pace that requires some stamina on the reader’s part, but the author has been careful not to require an extensive historical or technical background. Everything you need to follow the narrative is available within the covers, while the text is enlivened by a good selection of images. We learn how Newton’s reputation, and even the contents of his biography, have been revised since his death, and how those who have represented him in words and images have shaped and selected them to suit their own ends and assumptions. In case we fondly imagine that our own age will emerge with a more candid and honest appreciation, the author sustains her thesis to our own time: “The modern focus on Newton as a scientific hero owes much to the cumulative effects of 300 years of media manipulation.” This historical analysis sits in parallel with a similarly contextualized characterization of science itself, where “accounts that celebrated science’s progressive march towards the truth ... now seem too simplistic and triumphal.” Science, like our image of Newton, has been affected by “social, political, economic, and religious constraints”, so that the subject of this book is much
broader than it might at first appear: “The story of Newton’s shifting reputations is inseparable from the rise of science itself.” Newtonian iconography is unpacked in an illuminating way, through portraits, busts, medals, prints, and statues, and this includes Newton’s own management of his image until his death. His 18th century reputation is traced through his ‘disciples’ and his ‘enemies’, though even the disciples, such as William Whiston, George Cheyne, and John Desaguliers, modified and manipulated their inheritance, and some, such as Immanuel Kant and Leonhard Euler, who demurred and challenged aspects of Newton’s work, were not antagonistic to the whole. Meanwhile, interest in Newton’s alchemy and biblical chronology and prophesy fluctuated according to intellectual fashion. There is an illuminating chapter of the shifting notion of ‘genius’ and the prominent part Newton’s reputation has played in this story. Under ‘Myths’, familiar anecdotes about Newton are examined for their use as parables of virtue, while under ‘Shrines’, we encounter places of pilgrimage and objects of veneration, learning that the relics of science are respected every bit Patricia Fara Newton: The Making of Genius (2002), 384 pp., Columbia University Press (US), ISBN: 0-231-12806-1, $29.95 Pan Macmillan (UK), ISBN: 0-333-90735-3, £20
as much as those of religion. The story is brought up to the present with the revisionist accounts of historians and the imaginative plots of novelists. This is a fine book, one that challenges notions of scientific reputation, their foundation, and validity. The message is not at all that Newton’s reputation should be undermined or belittled, but rather that we can begin to understand how we and others see, and have seen, him only by looking at the historical, intellectual, and cultural contexts in which these assessments are made and propagated. Jim Bennett is the director of the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.
June 2003
59