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Books : reviews

John Etienne Beckman, Bernard E. J. Pagel.
Evolutionary Phenomena in Galaxies.
CUP. 1989

This book reviews the subject of evolutionary phenomena in galaxies, bringing together contributions by experts on all the relevant physics and astrophysics necessary to understand galaxies and how they work. The book is based on the proceedings of a conference held in July 1988 in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife which was timed to coincide with the first year of operation of the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope. The broad topics covered include formation of galaxies and their ages, stellar dynamics, galactic scale gas and its role in star formation and the production and distribution of the chemical elements within galaxies. All the topics are dealt with by theorists as well as observers so that it is possible to appreciate how successful is the confrontation between the two, and where the major gaps in our understanding lie. The book comprises some 25 review articles by leading practitioners in the field, such as Rees, Renzini, Danziger, Matteucci, Pagel, Wielen, Arimoto, Beckman and Canal. This is a comprehensive and didactic book which will be valuable to researchers and students interested in the evolution of galaxies.

John Etienne Beckman.
Multimessenger Astronomy.
Spinger. 2021

Written by a professional astronomer who has worked on a wide spectrum of topics throughout his career, this book gives a popular science level description of what has become known as multimessenger astronomy. It links the new with the traditional, showing haw astronomy has advanced at increasing pace in the modern era.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century astronomy has seen the beginnings of a revolution. After centuries when all our information about the Universe has come via electromagnetic waves, now several entirely new ways of exploring it have emerged. The most spectacular has been the detection of gravitational waves in 2015, but astronomy also uses neutrinos and cosmic ray particles to probe processes in the centres of stars and galaxies.

The book is strongly oriented towards measurement and technique. Widely illustrated with colourful pictures of instruments, their creators and astronomical objects, it is backed with descriptions of the underlying theories and concepts, linking predictions, observations and experiments. The thread is largely historical, although obviously it cannot be encyclopaedic. Its point of departure is the beginning of the twentieth century and it aims at being as complete as possible for the date of completion at the end of 2020.

The book addresses a wide public whose interest in science is served by magazines like Scientific American: lively, intelligent readers but without university studies in physics.