N. N. Sheftal' - Böcker

This tenth volume completes the first series of "Growth of Crystals," which began in 1957. The sources of the volumes are as follows: for Vol. I, the 1st All-Union Conference on Crystal Growth; for Vol. 3, the 2nd; and for Vols. 5 and 6, the 3rd; Vols. 7 and 8 reported the International Symposium on Crystal Growth at the Seventh International Crystallography Con­ gress, and Vol. 9 the 1969 symposium on crystal growth dedicated to E. S. Fedorov; Vols. 2, 4, and 10 did not originate in conferences. The main problem that largely occupied the conferences and symposia and also the inter­ mediate volumes was that of real crystal formation, as well as the relation of crystal growth theory to practical crystal production. This tenth volume, which completes this first series, is to a considerable extent a survey. It contains more extensive theoretical and experimental original papers, as well as some shorter papers dealing with particular but important aspects of real crystal formation. The volume opens with a paper by V. V. Voronkov, which deals with the structure of crystal surface in Kossel's model. The model as proposed by Kossel is extremely simple. It deals qualitatively with the basic trends in the growth of an idealized crystal in its own va­ por at absolute zero, and naturally does not allow one to perform quantitative studies on com­ plex real processes.

For 50 years the Fedorov Institute of Crystallography, Mineralogy, and Petrography at Leningrad Mining Institute has held annual memorial meetings for E. S. Fedorov. Immediate­ ly after the jubilee meeting (May 21-24, 1969), the Fedorov All-Union Symposium on Crystal Growth was held, and the proceedings of that symposium constitute Volume 9 of Growth of Crystals. The symposium surveyed the advances made in the USSR in those aspects of growth con­ cerned mainly with morphology and structure in natural crystals or closely related artificial ones, work which confirmed their relation to E. S. Fedorov and to mineralogical crystallogra­ phy. Crystallography is one of the older branches of natural science but has recently under­ gone a striking rejuvenation on account of new methods and new concepts. Photogoniometric methods have been developed in goniometry, while crystal optics has found new lines of ad­ vance in electrooptics and techniques in the ultraviolet and far infrared regions. Morphologic studies now use a vast range of techniques, from the hand lens to the electron microscope or cinemicrography. X-ray analysis is steadily becoming more automatic, and fast computers are used with accelerated methods of structure interpretation. Crystal growth is one of the younger divisions of crystallography; previously t it had been of interest only in experimental mineralogy, but now it is an important branch of science and technology with close relations to industry.

The first volume in the present series contained the papers read at the first conference on crystal growth. This second volume appears during the interval between the first and second conferences, and contains various papers on crystal growth, in addition to the late S.