General Virology

the first importance. Behnke has demonstrated that the "lean body mass," since it represents the active tissue of a person, is superior to reference standards hitherto proposed for the estimation of physiological functions such as the masses of various organs and tissues and the volumes of the different fluid compartments in the body. In the present article, which has been reprinted as a short paper-covered monograph, the same principle has been applied to the study of the relation of the lean body mass to oxygen consumption. A large part of the article is devoted to an ingenious mathematical comparison of lean body weight with other reference standards for basal metabolism; but there is in addition a discussion of the implications of this correlation. The paper, which was awarded an A. Cressy Morrison Prize in Natural Science in 1952 by the New York Academy of Sciences, deserves careful consideration by all who are interested in anthropometric measurements and metabolic standards. There is a useful bibliography of fifty-nine references. This small, non-mathematical, and very readable book on nuclear physics is from the pen of one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of the day. Heisenberg originated many of the fundamental ideas of quantum mechanics, and for these discoveries he was awarded a Nobel prize. During the last war he directed some of the nuclear energy research in Germany. At present he is the director of the Max Planck Institute of Physics at Gottingen. The first, a German, edition of this book, published during the war, was based on a series of lectures given to electrical engineers. This English edition is a translation of the latest revision in 1948. Since there is no coverage of the very extensive developments in nuclear physics in the past five years, this book is now to be recommended chiefly as an excellent coverage of the history and principles of nuclear physics. It should be of the greatest value to workers in other branches of science and technology who now find that they must have a greater knowledge of the radiations from atomic nuclei than they remember from their sophomore physics course. I guarantee that this semi-popular discussion of the nucleus is authoritative, and that there is practically not a single mathematical equation in the entire book. come of age, for not only is Dr. Luria's book the first general virology text written entirely by one person, but …