- Atomic Spectra Atomic Structure

T HE present edition of this work contains a number of corrections and additions; Birge's new set of fundamental constants has been adopted throughout, and various tables, especially the table of ionization potentials, have been brought up to date. The author is indebted to Professor J. W. Ellis of the University of California at Los Angeles for a list of errors and corrections ; several of the author's students have also been helpful in pointing out certain mistakes. The author is grateful to Dover Publications for their initiative and interest in making this book available again in a revised photo-offset edition in spite of wartime difficulties. G. H. T present work is the translation of a volume published in German by Theodor Steinkopff about a year ago.1 Atomic Spectra and Atomic Structure constitutes the first part of a more comprehensive course on atomic and molecular spectra which the author has prepared and given recently. Though in the past few years several excellent accounts have been written on the subject of atomic spectra (cf. bibliography), there is still a need for an elementary introduction that is especially adapted to the beginner in this field and also to those who require a certain knowledge of the subject because of its applications in other fields. For these two groups of readers the discussion of too many details and special cases does not seem desirable, since it is likely to obscure the fundamentally important points. Consequently, in thii book the main stress is laid on the basic principles of the subject. Great pains have been taken to explain them as clearly as possible. To this end numerous diagrams and spectrograms are given as illustrations. Always the experimental results serve as the starting point of the theoretical considerations. Complicated mathematical developments have been avoided. Instead, the results of such calculations have been accepted without proof, reference being given to sources where proof can be found. Throughout the work an effort has been made to emphasize the physical significance of the theoretical deductions. vi Preface Rather liberal use has been made of small type in the printing of certain portions of the text. These, together with the footnotes , contain theoretical explanations and details that may very well be omitted in a first reading without interfering with an understanding of the fundamental points. Throughout the book, in making this distinction between small and ordinary type, the …