Nearly all of this book is taken from an article prepared in 1956 for a recent
volume of the Encyclopedia of Physics. This article, in turn, is partly based on
Dr. Norbert Rosenzweig's translation of an older article on the same subject,
written by one of us (HAB) about 25 years ago for the Geiger-Scheel Handbuch
der Physik. To the article written last year we have added some Addenda and
Errata. These Addenda and Errata refer back to some of the 79 sections of the
main text and contain some misprint corrections, additional references and some
notes.