Book Review: Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials

This is an amusing book. It contains (apparently verbatim!) the text of lectures given to second-year engineering students at Oxford. It covers a fairly conventional range of topicsthe elements of quantum mechanics and atomic physics, the band theory of solids, metals, semiconductors, dielectrics, magnetic materials, masers and lasers, and superconductivity. But although the topics themselves may be conventional, the treatment is certainly not. The authors' aim is clearly to impart the essential physical principles, and they refuse to become bogged down in unnecessary detail, particularly lengthy mathematics. They have been remarkably successful in their task, and the result is a book which is eminently readable-one might almost say suitable for bedtime reading. Even readers quite familiar with the subject will find some things presented in a fresh light, and will appreciate that some apparently involved arguments are basically quite simple.