Scientific American Magazine Vol 178 Issue 5

Scientific American Magazine

Volume 178, Issue 5

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Features

The Future of the Amazon

Four hundred years of civilized invasion having failed to extract its vast wealth, the Hylean Amazon Institute will now try using the scientific method from within

Peter van Dresser

The Man-Apes of South Africa

Recent fossil finds reconstruct a possible direct ancestor of man who lived seven million years ago

Wilton M. Krogman

Concerning "Social Physics"

The quotation marks indicate that it is not an accepted science, although it may well become one. Its principal concept: the behavior of people in large numbers may be predicted by mathematical rules

John Q. Stewart

Vesalius: Discoverer of the Human Body

His great De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which founded modern anatomy, is also an unsurpassed work of scientific art

Martin Gumpert

The Dust Cloud Hypothesis

The vast distances of interstellar space are filled with huge amounts of dust and gas, the study of which has led to a new theory accounting for the origin of stars and planets

Fred L. Whipple

The Luminescence of Living Things

The soft, cold light given off by a host of plants and animals is an engaging mystery, especially for writers and scientists. Herewith a biologist presents a brief essay on what is known of bioluminescence

E. Newton Harvey

Davisson and Germer

In 1927 they discovered that the electron is a wave as well as a particle, a seemingly paradoxical fact which is a part of the foundation of modern physics

Karl K. Darrow

Smelting under Pressure

The U. S., world's largest producer of iron and steel, must have more of both. One way to ease the shortage is to increase the pressure of blast in blast furnaces

Leonard Engel

Departments

Letters to the Editors, May 1948

50 and 100 Years Ago: May 1948

Science and the Citizen: May 1948

Books

The Amateur Astronomer

Bibliography