Stereology. Proceedings of the Second International Congress for Stereology, Chicago, April 8‐13, 1967 edited by H. Elias

By implication, the Preface defines stereology as 'discussion of problems concerning the recognition of three-dimensional structure', which should include most of crystallography as a special case. The Introduction explicitly defines stereology as the 'three-dimensional interpretation of flat images or extrapolation from twoto three-dimensional space', including the study of metal surfaces, geological and biological sections, and heavenly objects. Most of the sixtyodd papers in the Proceedings deal with biological problems, and none are specifically crystallographic. (One, by a metallurgist with crystallographic leanings, deals with ~sectioned textures in the decorative arts'.) Besides studies of specific structures, there are several papers of general interest, dealing with the mathematical methods of relating two-dimensional to three-dimensional distributions and similar problems, and papers dealing with instrumentation. The latter will be of particular interest to metallurgists and mineralogists. A group of six papers deals with reconstruction from serial sections; the superposition of transparent sheets representing successive sections of a three-dimensional electron-density synthesis is familiar to crystallographers, and one of the illustrations of a paper on neonatal biliary atresia bears an uncanny resemblance to such a map. The book is reproduced photographically from typescripts provided by the authors, and is inevitably very uneven in appearance, but it is everywhere easily legible. The papers range in length from half a page to a dozen pages. A worker in almost any field of science will find much in it to interest him, but there will be few who care to read the entire book.