Soft Condensed Matter R. A. L.Jones Oxford U. Press, New York, 2002. $65.00, $30.00 paper (195 pp.). ISBN 0-19-850590-6, ISBN 0-19-850589-2 paper

Soft condensed matter has had a slow and difficult evolution toward acceptance as a subfield of physics. Even acceptance of the field’s name has taken time. What does “soft” mean? And what does soft condensed matter physics include? Liquid crystals and polymer physics are surely parts of it, but the study of those topics has been well established for much longer than soft condensed matter.

Good textbooks are essential in establishing any field; they help broaden interest in the field and ensure that the next generation of physicists can learn it. The classic textbook for soft condensed matter is Principles of Condensed Matter Physics , by Paul Chaikin and Tom Lubensky (Cambridge U. Press, 1995), which does not even have “soft” in its title, even though it was the first general text to deal with the subject comprehensively. That book, which has certainly helped stimulate interest, is suitable for advanced graduate students (or for bedtime reading in British sitcoms like “Keeping Up Appearances”). But a need has long existed for texts suitable for an introductory graduate or senior undergraduate course. Soft Condensed Matter, by Richard A. L. Jones, is the first textbook to meet that need. Jones, a professor of physics at the University of Sheffield, UK, is an experimentalist whose expertise is polymers at interfaces.

A first critical task for a book on soft condensed matter physics is to define the field’s extent. That task is particularly difficult because the field is still so young that it continues to expand its reach; I think many scientists would define it much more broadly today than even five years ago. Jones defines soft condensed matter as “materials in states of matter that are neither simple liquids nor crystalline solids of the type studied in other branches of solid state physics” (p. 1). He adopts the rather traditional approach of focusing primarily on complex fluids, including colloids, surfactant solutions, polymer solutions, and liquid crystals. He also discusses polymer melts, block copolymers, and biomolecules.

A second important decision is how to organize the material. Should the book be organized around concepts that unify the field or around material problems that define it? Jones chooses a mixture of the two. He has several chapters that focus on generic soft materials; these include chapters on colloids, polymers, and biological materials. Other important classes of materials are combined with concepts. Thus gels are discussed in a chapter about gelation; liquid crystals are discussed in a chapter about partial order in soft materials; and amphiphilic molecules, both surfactants and block copolymers, are covered in a chapter on self-assembly. Additional chapters discuss such important conceptual themes as phase transitions. An introductory chapter discusses key concepts that define soft condensed matter, including relevant scales of energy, length, and time. Although such organization is mixed, it works reasonably well to introduce materials and unify concepts.

The book, intended for a one-term introductory course in soft condensed matter, is rather short and agreeably terse in style. However, the brevity required some hard choices among topics, and Jones omits several important ones. For example, he does not mention foams, emulsions, granular materials, or interfacial films. He says little about experimental techniques that have been critical to the field. But given the necessity of selecting, I think Jones has done a good job.

Soft Condensed Matter is well formatted as a modern textbook, with large margins that contain extra information and highlight important points in the text. Each chapter has problem sets and recommendations for related texts and papers. Appendices discuss some basic concepts of statistical physics, but some introduction to statistical physics will still be a highly desirable prerequisite for a course based on this textbook.

Teaching an introductory course in soft condensed matter has been difficult largely because of the lack of a good textbook. Jones’s book fills the need admirably. It should make teaching much easier, which in turn should result in many more soft condensed matter courses being offered. That will surely help the field to grow even more.