100 YEARS AGO

Religion and Science: Some Suggestions for the Study of the Relations Between Them. By P. N. Waggett, M.A. Pp. xii+174. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1904.)

It is pleasant to find a book which seeks to deal from the religious standpoint with the relations between religion and science... The author speaks, with possibly undue modesty, of his own opinions on the “domestic” issues that divide biologists. Holding, as he does, that “natural selection remains scientifically the most probable and philosophically the most welcome account of the adaptations of animal and vegetable life,” he is perhaps inclined to attach too much weight to the arguments that have been brought forward by various scientific authorities on the other side.

Buy English Acres. By C. F. Dowsett. Pp. 224. (Published by the Author, Winklebury, Basingstoke.)

This is not a book in the ordinary sense. It is a collection of miscellaneous arguments, extracts from books, and biographical notes, all intended to prove that pleasure and profit may be derived from the purchase of English land. The absence of any attempt at coherence or sustained economic discussion is atoned for, so far as possible, by the author's great earnestness. Apart from that, the book has no serious qualities.

From Nature 30 June 1904.

50 YEARS AGO

The Collected Papers of Peter J. W. Debye Pp. xxii+700. (New York: Interscience Publishers, Inc.; London: Interscience Publishers, Ltd., 1954.)

To celebrate the seventieth birthday of Prof. Peter Debye, this volume containing a selection of his classical papers has appeared. No one during the past forty years has made so many significant contributions to modern physical chemistry as has Prof. Debye: his name will always be associated with such topics as X-ray scattering, the theory of strong electrolytes, dipole moments and, during more recent years, with the scattering of light by colloidal solutions... While the book is an important one for purposes of reference, it is most valuable in that it gives us a glimpse of the methods of attack adopted by one who, trained as a mathematician, became in turn professor of theoretical then experimental physics and finally professor of chemistry, in which subject he received the Nobel Prize.

From Nature 3 July 1954.