An introduction to the kinetic theory of gases

IN 1904 there appeared a slender volume entitled “The Dynamical Theory of Gases”, in which the author, now Sir James Jeans, endeavoured to develop the theory “upon as exact a mathematical basis as possible”. It was an original and somewhat severe book, the reader being at once confronted with the difficulties of the law of distribution of molecular velocities and with statistical mechanics and the controversies and unresolved problems on the equipartition of energy. At that time the English student whose reading was confined to his own language had to choose between the somewhat arid treatises by Burbury and by Watson, or the translation of Meyer's attractive, almost chatty, but unmathematical book. Jeans' book, which was much more akin to Boltzmann's elegant “Vorlesungen über Gastheorie”, found acceptance, despite its severity, and many of to-day's physicists, as well as mathematicians, were ’brought up on it’ so far as gastheory was concerned, and looked to it as to an oracle, sometimes difficult to fathom as is the way with oracles.An Introduction to the Kinetic Theory of GasesBy Sir James Jeans. Pp. vi + 311. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1940.) 15s. net.