Correspondance. Choix de Lettres (1905-1934) by Marie Curie; Irène Curie; Gilette ZieglerReview by: Paul FormanIsis, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 337-338Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/230870 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 70: 2: 252 (1979) 337

duire, reediter et introduire avec autorite, cet ouvrage qui, sous reserve d'une lecture atten- tive, sera pour beaucoup une revelation. D'origine suisse lui-meme, eduque dans la tradition d'Emile Argand, lui seul sans doute pouvait reussir a transposer correctement en anglais le langage particulier, dense, sur- charge d'images et d'idees (et parfois d'une poesie reelle, toute de verite), du profond penseur neuchatelois-athlete de l'erudition scientifique et insurpassable geologue de ter- rain, autant grand naturaliste qu'architecte de precision.

Argand, au prix d'un extraordinaire labeur solitaire, a voulu faire une synthese complete (aujourd'hui evidemment depassee) de la structure geologique de l'Eurasie, illustree par une carte tectonique, le prototype du genre, dont la reproduction accompagne le present ouvrage. Mais surtout, il elabore une theorie "globale", complete, hautement originale, de la genese des chaines de montagnes et de la deformation des continents. Par bien de ses aspects, elle conserve tout son interet, ne serait-ce que parce que, pour la premiere fois, l'orogenese etait expliquee comme conse- quence de la mobilite des continents selon Wegener: leur eloignement suivi d'un af- frontement edifie les chaines neuves de type alpin ou himalayen. Mais le continent, siege principal de l'energie transmise par un flux infracrustal omnipresent, se deforme en plis de fond ou bombement de socle; ils peuvent se rompre selon des cassures verticales, ou, a partir du bourrelet frontal, en nappes de charriages cassantes, induites en plein conti- nent par l'effort tangentiel. Nous pensons que sur ces deux points parmi d'autres (epirogen- ese et charriages cisaillants), les modeles d'Argand (verbaux et graphiques) conservent toute leur valeur. I1 en va de meme pour ses coupes tectoniques des chaines alpines, que la geophysique actuelle parait confirmer.

Ce qui distingue surtout la theorie d'Ar- gand de nos conceptions du jour, outre le vocabulaire (ce qui est peu en verite), c'est surtout la croyance en la viscosite des oceans, alors inexplores. Or, en completant Argand par Bailey Willis et son "sea-spreading" medio-oceanique, et par Stille et ses "bathy- cratons" oceaniques rigides, nous retrouvons la, au total, esquissees voici un demi-siecle, les bases essentielles de la "New Global Tec- tonics." I1 est facheux que le triomphe de celle-ci s'accompagne de tant d'oubli et d'un mepris general pour toute la bibliographie anterieure. La reedition par Carozzi de l'eton- nant livre d'Emile Argand vient a son heure pour contribuer a restituer ses racines histor- iques a notre science actuelle de la Terre.

Redecouvrir la pensee de nos predecesseurs inspires, c'est bien souvent vivifier notre pro- pre pensee, de facon creatrice; et c'est aussi elever la science au niveau d'une culture.

FRAN;OIS ELLENBERGER Laboratoire de Geologie Structurale et Ap- pliquee

Universite de Paris-Sud 91405 Orsay, France

Marie Curie; Irene Curie. Correspondance. Choix de lettres (1905-1934). Edited by Gi- lette Ziegler. 352 pp., illus. Paris: Les Edi- teurs Francais Reunis, 1974.

"I wrote her often, when one of us was traveling," recalled Marie's elder daughter Irene (born 1897). "Among these letters a large number are very brief and are only a response to the emotional need to make up for the absence of one who is dear. Some- times our letters were longer, and it is amus- ing to see the variety of subjects we discussed, and how they changed, across the years" (p. 7). Of some four hundred letters, in the hands of Irene's children, Pierre Joliot and Helene Langevin, 240 are printed here, arranged in three groups: 1905-1913, 40 letters, including 4 by Marie; 1914-1918, 110 letters including 25 by Marie; 1919-1934, 90 letters including 33 by Marie, and several by Frederic Joliot, Irene's husband.

With but a few exceptions (letters of July 1924, Sept. 18, 1924, June 5, 1925) scientific content is virtually absent from the letters written before the end of 1928. It is only the forty in the following four years which con- tain many interesting remarks on work in their laboratory and on their scientific jour- neys. This reflects Irene's surprisingly late attainment of scientific maturity. She had since childhood been seen by her mother, and by herself, as following in her parents' foot- steps. Raised to be Marie's friend and co- worker, by age fourteen Irene was already personally quite mature, and she gave ample proof of this as director and operator of a mobile X-ray unit (of her mother's invention) during World War I. Yet intellectually her development was slow, due partly to lack of talent. Her mother set her mathematical problems during the summer vacations: ele- mentary algebra at age ten; differential calcu- lus at age thirteen. Yet at age twenty Irene was still asking Marie to set her problems in theoretical physics, and she seems never to have attained even to her mother's modest mathematical facility (letter of Dec. 29, 1928).

The letters are extraordinarily sachlich,

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338 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 70: 2: 252 (1979)

matter-of-fact, objective descriptions of ex- ternal circumstances-Irene's even more than Marie's. People are mentioned often, but al- most never feelings about them. Irene's child- ish vivacity gave place in the twenties to an imperturbable equanimity. Marie remained capable of vehemence about the weakness of humanity or the fate of her nation (let- ters of Aug.-Sept. 1914) at one extreme, or about the delays of the postal service at the other. For this reason most striking and touching is Marie's sulking letter (Sept. 24, 1926) in response to her daughter's projected marriage plans-the only letter in which Ma- rie found fault with Irene as her assistant. Could Marie not see that this marriage would preserve far more of the mother's daughter than any other imaginable match?

Each of the three groups of letters is intro- duced by a sketchy summary of the circum- stances of Marie's and Irene's lives in that period. Some letters are clearly responses to important letters which are not included, while many brief and insignificant ones are included. No indication is given of how the selection was made. In the two or three cases where there are ellipses in the printed letters, these remain unexplained. Annotations are infrequent; happily the few are largely de- voted to the identification of personal friends and domestics. There is no index.

PAUL FORMAN Museum of History and Technology

Smithsonian Institution Washington, D. C. 20560

R. Cargill Hall. Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger. (NASA History Series.) xvii + 450 pp., illus., apps., notes, index. Washing- ton, D.C.: Scientific and Technical Informa- tion Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1977. $6.25 (paper).

R. Cargill Hall has written a very readable history of a complex technological and scien- tific venture on the cutting edge of knowl- edge. Because of the voluminous appendices, the illustrations, and the general format, it appears to be a much bigger book than it is. Scientists, managers, technologists, and tech- nicians, as well as historians, can benefit by reading the story, starting with Thomas Hughes' thoughtful introduction. In doing so the reader must wonder, not that the materi- als were available for the story, but that the author was able to sort amongst them to come up with a readable piece. Rather like the medieval historian, Hall has had the ines-

timable benefit of revealed knowledge sup- plied here not by the God of theology and his scribes but by the God of science and technol- ogy and his machines.

The most dramatic moments of success, and too often of failure, have been recaptured with almost novel-like authenticity not so much by oral history as by means of TV tapes. For those of us whose best sources have been minutes and delayed conversations with participants, the luxury of being able to see exactly what people said at critical times and to use it makes us envious. Probably much the same could be said of the Hacker and Grimwood On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, but NASA refused Isis a review copy.

Project Ranger was assigned to Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the wake of Sputnik. It bore all the earmarks of hasty work under pressure from management by committee through decentralization to the project development plan. It suffered from the harm done to delicate components by the sterilization processes demanded for fear that man would carry his germs to other planets; from over-testing of components to the point that when launched, they had reached the end of their lives; to the failure of either launch vehicles or of such basic items as timers which were to order the spacecraft's activities in its journey to the moon. Moreover, the whole Ranger project suffered from divided aims with minimum payloads-was the objective knowledge of the moon and of spacecraft technology or was Ranger to be a vehicle merely for scientific experiments? (One al- most hears a scientist saying, "While you are up, get me a Van Allen Belt. And take out X's experiment because it is not compatible with mine.")

In fact, one of the big battles throughout the program was not just between NASA and JPL, but between scientists and engineers. Much of this was because this was a pioneer program. By the time Ranger 8 was flight- tested at Cape Kennedy in early 1965, many of the frustrations and irritations were gone, because the bugs had been worked out of the system and routine established. Ranger 8 impacted on the moon within 24 kilometers of its target with an accuracy exceeding con- siderably that of World War II bombers just twenty years earlier. And so the groundwork was laid for the later successful landing of men on the moon.

ROBIN HIGHAM

Department of History Kansas State University

Manhattan, Kansas 66506

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