In the original dust jacket. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view our photographs. An extremely rare original book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. View this book’s dust cover for further details. 

This signed first edition was gifted to Jack’s distinguished parents, Ruth and Herbert Lang, by Stanley Whitehead.

In electromagnetism, a dielectric (or dielectric medium) is an electrical insulator that can be polarised by an applied electric field. When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the material as they do in an electrical conductor, because they have no loosely bound, or free, electrons that may drift through the material, but instead they shift, only slightly, from their average equilibrium positions, causing dielectric polarisation. Because of dielectric polarisation, positive charges are displaced in the direction of the field and negative charges shift in the direction opposite to the field. This creates an internal electric field that reduces the overall field within the dielectric itself. If a dielectric is composed of weakly bonded molecules, those molecules not only become polarised, but also reorient so that their symmetry axes align to the field. The study of dielectric properties concerns storage and dissipation of electric and magnetic energy in materials. Dielectrics are important for explaining various phenomena in electronics, optics, solid-state physics and cell biophysics.

Whitehead was born in Sutton, Surrey in 1902 and educated at Sir Walter St. John’s School. After winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, Whitehead obtained first-class degrees in mathematics and in physics before carrying out research with Lord Cherwell at the Clarendon Laboratory. He was appointed as a physicist at the Electrical Research Association, becoming Director in 1946 and holding this post until his death in 1956. His particular interest was dielectric research, and he had an international reputation in fields such as telephone and radio interference. During the Second World War, he was engaged in the ERA’s work on bomb and mine locators. He played Rugby fives in his youth, and later served as Secretary of the Rugby Fives Association. He was a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He was awarded a fellowship of Queen Mary College, London in recognition of his services to education.