BOOH REVIEWS manufacturing was a critical element in this period of transition. The author states that the use of chemical theories, analytical techniques, and laboratory experiments was essential to the determination of optimum parameters and the design of chemical apparatus for large-scale processes. Although not mentioned in the preface or conclusion, nor explicitly emphasized in the tent, it can be deduced from Smith's wark that government intervention was the most crucial factor in the development of the French heavy chemical industry. French government actions affecting the chemical industry between 1760 and 1825 included: granting exclusive privileges, levying import duties, issuing government loans to prospective manufacturers, granting exemptions from the salt tan, publishing government technical reports, and controlling the supply and price of saltpeter. As Smith frequently points out, the decision to erect a chemical works, continue its operation, or stop production was often in resoonse to soecific eovernment oolicies., leeinlation. " , nr ~- fnvora. Smith has obviously thoroughly researched the history of the early French chemical industry. In addition to his detailed description of innumerable chemical works, he includes numerous sketches of plant apparatus, maps, graphs of relevant economic variables, and a comprehensive bibliography. However, Smith obscures his hssic themes by the inclusion of a mass of insignificant data. He tends to confuse the reader and to dilute his arguments by including accounts of what appears to he every plant ever huilt-or even contemplated. In addition, Smith has failed ta characterize properly the close relatiow ships that existed among the four major industries that form the focus of his study. By introducingnew data in his conclusion about other industries, the author forgoes his last opportunity to unify his wark and thereby further obscures his ideas. I t is only after several readings that this reader clearly discovered the author's intended themes. Although t h e hook has several shortcomines and the hieh mice ($98.001 will surelv ~
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John A. Heitmann Depaiiment of History of Science The Johns Hopkins University Baltimore. MD 21218
Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner (Editors), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 1980. x 376 pp. 24 X 16 cm. $20.00.
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It is not widely known that the eminent nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer received his B. A. degree in, of all fieldschemistry. Leaving Harvard in the spring of 1925 it is clear from the personal letters comprising mast of this book, that Oppenheimer had no foretelling of his later prominence in the 1940's as Father of the A-Bomb or, in the 1950's, as a sensational "security risk."
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Journal of Chemical Education
The editors have done more than eclectically gathering epistles, however, since the circumstances of each have to he explained somewhat. Unfortunately, that narrative text is weak. This flaw was perhaps inevitable, though, since the Oppenheimer story is but a portion of an immense panorama of dramatic events and notable discoveries. The extensive correspondence penned hy JRO during his undergraduate days suggests a usually modest genius in love withall kinds of ideas. One of his instructors was Alfred North Whitehead who seems to have made the study of the "Principia Mathematica" a ". pleasure of Learning.. . ." There are several new anecdotes here, some of which are about the late 1930's and illustrate the difficulty of working with a brilliant colleague. When JRO went t o Pasadena during the Berkeley term, a t the last minute he sometimes asked a fellow professor to lecture for him. "It won't be any trouble," said JRO, "It's all in the book." Finding that the hook was in Dutch, which he could not read, the colleague demurred. "But it's such easy Dutch," said Oppenheimer. Overall this book seems well-researched and is must reading for students of the heginnings of the Atomic Age. (One curious omission in the Bibliography is that of the gripping N. P. Davis hook, "Lawrence and 0ppenheimer"-hut perhaps Smith and Weiner judged it more synthesis that nonfiction.) The first portion makes for generally useful reading and gives insight on the mind of a brilliant undergraduate. (Oh, how we science educators wish far more of them!). There are also numerous clues to the future bent of the mature JRO-interesting to those curious about the 1950's political side of this singular person. Richard E. Bozak California State University, Hayward Hayward. CA 94542
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The Biochemistry of Inorganic Polyphosphates 1. S. Kolaev, John Wiley & Sons, NY, 1980. xiv 255 pp. Figs. and tables. 16 X 23 cm. $48.95.
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This book, a t $48.95, will tell you more than you ever wanted to know (or even thought existed) about inorganic polmhosphates of biological origin. A paraphrasing of the chapter headings is 1: Chemistry of cvndensed polyphosphates (10 pp.) 2: Detection in biological materials (6 PP.) 3: Distribution in living organisms (5 PP.) 4: Degree of polymerization versus organism (14 pp.) 5: I n uiuo form (i.e., RNA complexes) (11 PP.) 6: Intracellular localization (20 pp.) 7: Biasynthesis (28 pp.) 8: Degradation and utilization (27 pp.) 9: Physiological function (19 pp.) 10: Evolutionary aspects (13 pp.) The vast bulk of the 848 references are to work published hefore 1970. Nevertheless, for hioinorganic polyphasphaticians, it will serve as a useful source of references to Eastern work. The reviewer found the chapter on evolutionary aspects of inorganic polyphosphates to he utterly fascinating.
Howard W. Whitlock, Jr. University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wi 53706 Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 19431945 Lawrence Badash, Joseph 0. Hirschfelder, and Herbert P Broida (Editors), D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, 1980. xxi 188 pp. 15 X 22.5 cm. First chaos exists. Then, as good ehemistry should, it moves into order. Sometimes one can hardly bear to hear again that tiresome proverb, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." In "Reminiscences of Los Alamos 1943-1945" one is almost immediately "gripped" with this quality of the historic and human "sameness" that occurs when a social z r o m finds itself chaotic and
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disciplined people, who happened, by chance, by inclination and qualification, to participate in the construction of the world's first atomic bomb, a t Los Alamos, New Mexico. "Reminiscences" begins in a tedious sort of chaos, in an arid and mountainous desert in New Mexico. I t is described by John H. Dudley who shared in large part the responsibility far choosing Los Alamos as a laboratory site. The hook's principal failing, if you can call it that. is that it heains slawlv. That characteristie redeems itself by the presence of Dudley's understated and often dry wit. On the whole, however, it is an unusually interesting and gripping book-surprisingly so, considering the amount of material already written about the atomic bomb. As mentioned, the book sets forth pleasantly, in an almost folksy "tone of voice" (they were lectures, after all) some of the personal feelings these individuals experienced a t Los Alamos. While building the world's most sophisticated destructive weapon, they also dealt with some of the daily and banal prohlems of family and limited social life. Simultaneously they had to cope with what now seems a frantically paranoid secrecy involving military police and censorship of mail. Sometimes one experiences the tempting desire to graph the pacing of a particular hook. Good pacing is difficult to manage hy the hest of editors and writers, whatever the
Fevnman. Described in the hioeraohical to us as a person who "was not anybody a t all." As he continues "speaking," this is clearly not true. His considerable ability to express a view of human absurdity as i t appeared around him in his work betray him. He was and probably definitely is somebody. His eatremely un-cruel humor is the obvious fruit of the wisdom that comes from having survived much inner pain, or from having seen much pain. The result is a kind of sad laughter a t the wonderfully mixed joy and sorrow of being human. Without exception all ten of these warm and witty people describe the tension and urgency of the Second World War, their (Continued on page A1 12)
