Journal of Chemical Physics

The first number of the new American Journal of Chemical Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics and has an editorial board comprising the leading American chemists and physicists, contains a number of important papers. In a brief editorial introduction, Prof. H. C. Urey, the managing editor, states that the journal caters for an increasing number of investigators who are working on subjects on the border-line between physics and chemistry, who have a broad knowledge of both sciences and are using methods of investigation which belong neither to classical chemistry nor to traditional physics. The papers in the new journal, which has an attractive format and is well printed in double-column pages, include contributions by Langmuir on an extension of the phase rule for adsorption, by. Debye on the mass of electrolytic ions, by G. N. Lewis on the chemical bond, by Harkins and Jackson on a spectroscopic study of the decomposition and synthesis of organic compounds by electrical discharges, by Pauling on helium molecule ions, and several other important communications on physics and physical chemistry. It is clear that a high standard has been set in the new journal, and although the multiplicity of chemical and physico-chemical journals, especially in Germany and the United States, presents a serious economic problem to scientific institutions, the Journal of Chemical Physics should be welcomed as an authoritative medium for the publication of work which is interesting both to chemists and physicists.