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838 NATURE September 19, 1959 veL 1s4
of methods of determination of vapour pressure and As a book for reference it suffers from the absence
equilibrium compositions, one feels that the authors of a list of symbols, and what is more serious, although
would have much to contribute on the special prob- the author himself admits it, is the use of the same
lems connected with thermostats. Many readers will symbol with entirely different, and different shades
be grateful for the extensive review of equilibrium of, meaning.
stills, particularly because of the systematic method The presentation and reproduction is, of course,
of classification employed, and the summarized com- up to John Wiley's usual high standard.
parison of them in a single table at the end of the The work on "Transistor Electronics" by Lo
chapter. et al. is a reprint of a well-known book published in
Part 3 consists of an alphabetical index to more 1955 in the United States by Prentice-Hall. It has
than 1,200 references to original work on the experi- now been published in Britain by Macmillan, but the
mental determination of equilibrium data. This printing was carried out (and very well, too) in the
impressive list is all the more valuable as it gives Netherlands. So far as I can see there are no altera-
world-wide coverage of technical publications up to tions to the original text. It covers substantially the
February 1957. same ground as Hurley's book but of course Hurley
Although the book falls short of a comprehensive has three extra years development to include, and
treatise and in its present edition has a number of in a field that is subject to continual metamorphosis
shortcomings, it is nevertheless an outstanding con- this gives him a considerable advantage.
tribution to the subject, and contains so much of The authors, who were all with the Radio Corpora-
solid worth that most workers in the field should tion of America when the book was written, favmll'
learn something from its pages, and find it of con- the four-terminal network approach to the transistor
stant value as a reference work. R. SARGENT equivalent circuit and deduce the performance in
the various circuits using this as the basis. A very
useful table shows the many varied forms the four-
terminal equivalent network can take and will be
TRANSISTOR ELECTRONICS very useful for reference. The book is intended both
as a text-book for students of this subject and as a
Junction Transistor Electronics reference work, but I feel that it is in the former
By Richard B. Hurley. Pp. xvii+473. (New York: application that it will be most useful.
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and J. w. R. GRIFFITHS
Hall, Ltd., 1958.) 100s. net.
Transistor Electronics
By Arthur W. Lo, Richard 0. Endres, Jakob Zawels,
Fred D. Waldhauer and Chung-Chih Cheng. Pp. PROGRESS IN PHYSIOLOGY
xii+521. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1958.)
45s. net. Annual Review of Physiology
Vol. 21. Edited by Victor E. Hall, in association
O N its own Hurley's book has a certain amount
to commend: it is, however, difficult to under-
stand the publishing policy of Messrs. John Wiley
with Frederick A. Fuhrman and Arthur C. Giese.
Pp. viii+636. (Palo Alto, Calif.: Annual Reviews,
Inc.; and the American Physiological Society, 1959.
and Sons. About a year ago they published an On sale by Annual Reviews, Inc.) 7 dollars.
excellent work on junction transistors edited by
R. F. Shea, a book which received very favourable
reviews. Hurley covers much the same ground as
Shea, differing only in detail, and although I must
W ITH the publication of Vol. 21, the "Annual
Review of Physiology" comes of age, though it is
still a mere fledgling to its 28-year sister publication,
admit his book is possibly designed more for use as the "Annual Review of Biochemistry". Its growth
a text-book, it cannot help being a competitor to over the years might be considered unphysiological,
Shea's work. for its size at birth (705 pages) was greater than it
Introductory chapters on semi-conductor principles is now (636 pages). The editorial committees have
lead on to the small signal equivalent circuit of the prevented the volume from becoming nnmanageably
transistor and the use of this circuit in the analysis large, but the question they raised last year remains
of tho transistor audio-amplifier. A chapter is unanswered: whether the present policy of "skim-
devoted to bias stabilization and another to the ming one volumeful of physiological cream" can be
application of negative feedback. The subject-matter continued indefinitely. With the growing output of
of Chapter 6, "The Nature of Internal Noise Genera- research, it means that a progressively smaller pro-
tion and Its Outward Effects", receives much better portion of the total published work is reviewed year
treatment than in Shea's book where it was dismissed, by year. A similar problem exists for annual reviews
rather perfunctorily, in about a page. in other subjects. Those who write the reviews are
The performance of a transistor under large signal faced with the difficulty of selection. If they include
conditions is considered and this leads to the problems too many papers in their survey, they tend to produce
of the design of power amplifiers. Direct-current little more than an annotated card index, useful for
amplifiers, video amplifiers, tuned amplifiers, auto- reference but almost impossible to read through. If
matic gain control, sinusoidal oscillators, modulation they select some of the more important recent work
circuits all receive attention by way of separate in their subject and give themselves room to discuss
chapters. Three more chapters deal with transistors it, they produce a more interesting and stimulating
in switching applications and in their use as relaxation review but may leave out a good deal of significant
oscillators. research. On the whole, the present reviewers have
Two rather special applications of the transistor, managed to make their summaries interesting to
namely, in regulated power-supplies and saturable read and useful for reference.
reactor-circuits, have individual chapters and receive The prefatory chapter is by A. V. Hill and deals
a more detailed treatment than in Shea's work. with the heat production in muscle and nerve from
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838 NATURE September 19, 1959 veL 1s4

© 1959 Nature Publishing Group

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