Abstract
THE National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council of the United States announce the forthcoming publication of the International Critical Tables. The first volume is to appear early in 1926 and is to be followed by four other volumes, comprising altogether about 2500 pages. The tables have been edited by Dr. Washburn, with Drs. Dorsey, West, Bichowsky, and Klemenc as assistant editors, who have had the co-operation of some three hundred experts in different parts of the world, but mainly drawn from the United States. According to the instructions to these experts, the tables are to differ in an important respect from many of the existing tables of physical and chemical constants. Instead of recording all or most of the determinations of a given constant which have been made, the co-operating experts were requested to give the most probable value of the constant after a critical consideration of all the determinations available. If this has been generally done with good judgment, the tables will be of great value to science. In a leaflet issued by the editors, the contents of the first volume, and the projected contents of the remaining volumes, are given. It is evident that very special attention is given to the needs of the technologist. The arrangement of the first volume is curious: an article on crystal structure is followed by articles on “dispersoidology, sweeting agents, odoriferous materials,”and then by one on radioactivity. The published price of the set of five volumes is 60 dollars, but up to the appearance of the first volume early in 1926, members of scientific and technical societies, government departments, educational institutions, public libraries, etc., can subscribe at 35 dollars. The editorial expense of the tables, about 170,000 dollars, has been contributed by American industrial firms and benevolent foundations.
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Current Topics and Events. Nature 116, 910–913 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116910a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116910a0