Atomic Energy

Abstract

IT is a bitter commentary on man‘s failure as a social being that any mention of atomic energy arouses feelings, not of pleasurable anticipation of a boon conferred, but of dread of an approaching and scarcely to be escaped evil ; and that an artist, commissioned to design a book-jacket for a treatise on the subject, should have been inspired, as John Hookham has been by the book that lies before us, to produce an allegorical picture of the fine flower of civilization already half-eclipsed by an obviously deadly and hideous growth. There is a certain bitter irony in the fact that the release of at least a small fraction of the enormous energy lying dormant in the heart of matter, which from one point of view represents the highest peak achieved by the modern scientific age, should also present the greatest single threat to its continued existence.

Atomic Energy in Cosmic and Human Life

Fifty Years of Radioactivity. By Assoc. Prof. George Gamow. Pp. xi + 161 + 5 plates. (Cambridge : At the University Press, 1947.) 7s. 6d. net.