Abstract
PROF. MAX PLANCK, whose photograph adorns its frontispiece, contributes a short foreword to this little book. The author sets out with the praiseworthy object of producing a “concise handbook” for the “general scientific reader.” In Part 1 he sketches the classical arguments leading to Wien's radiation law and the Raleigh-Jeans law, and describes how their disagreement with each other and with experiment led Planck to his formula and law. Part 2 is a description, which does not profess to be complete, of some applications of the theory; band spectra, for example, are barely mentioned in two sentences. Planck's second hypothesis and a somewhat irrelevant discussion of Nernst's heat theorem, however, fill a whole chapter. The chapters on the light quantum hypothesis, specific heats, and optical spectra, though of necessity brief, are good.
The Evolution and Development of the Quantum Theory.
By N. M. Bligh. Pp. 112. (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1926.) 9s. net.
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The Evolution and Development of the Quantum Theory . Nature 119, 193 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119193b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119193b0