''Introduction to Solid State Physics'', known colloquially as ''Kittel'', is a classic

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...

textbook written by American physicist

Charles Kittel Charles Kittel (July 18, 1916 – May 15, 2019) was an American physicist. He was a professor at University of California, Berkeley from 1951 and was professor emeritus from 1978 until his death. Life and work Charles Kittel was born in New Yo ...

in 1953. The book has been highly influential and has seen widespread adoption; Marvin L. Cohen remarked in 2019 that Kittel's content choices in the original edition played a large role in defining the field of

solid-state physics Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the l ...

. It was also the first proper textbook covering this new field of physics. The book is published by

John Wiley and Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...

and, as of 2018, it is in its ninth edition and has been reprinted many times as well as translated into over a dozen languages, including Chinese, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. In some later editions, the eighteenth chapter, titled ''Nanostructures'', was written by

Paul McEuen Paul McEuen (born 1963) is an American physicist. He received his B.S. in engineering physics at the University of Oklahoma (1985), and his Ph.D. in applied physics at Yale University (1991). After postdoctoral work at MIT (1990–1991), he became ...

. Along with its rival ''

Ashcroft and Mermin ''Solid State Physics'', better known by its colloquial name ''Ashcroft and Mermin'', is an introductory condensed matter physics textbook written by Neil Ashcroft and N. David Mermin. Published in 1976 by Saunders College Publishing and designed ...

'', the book is considered a standard textbook in condensed matter physics.

Background

Kittel received his PhD from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

in 1941 under his advisor Gregory Breit. Before being promoted to professor of physics at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

in 1951, Kittel held several other positions. He worked for the

Naval Ordnance Laboratory The Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) was a facility in the White Oak area of Montgomery County, Maryland. It is now used as the headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Origins The U.S. Navy Mine Unit, later the Mine Laboratory at t ...

from 1940 to 1942, was a research physicist in the US Navy until 1945, worked at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT from 1945 to 1947 and at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

from 1947 to 1951, and was a visiting associate professor at UC Berkeley from 1950 until his promotion. Henry Ehrenreich has noted that before the first edition of ''Introduction to Solid State Physics'' came out in 1953, there were no other textbooks on the subject; rather, the young field's study material was spread across several prominent articles and treatises. The field of solid state physics was very new at the time of writing and was defined by only a few treatises that, in the Ehrenreich's view, expounded rather than explained the topics and were not suitable as textbooks.

Content

The book covers a wide range of topics in solid state physics, including Bloch's theorem, crystals, magnetism, phonons, Fermi gases, magnetic resonance, and surface physics. The chapters are broken into sections that highlight the topics.

Reception

Marvin L. Cohen and Morrel H. Cohen, in an obituary for Kittel in 2019, remarked that the original book "was not only the dominant text for teaching in the field, it was on the bookshelf of researchers in academia and industry throughout the world", though they did not provide any time frame on when it may have been surpassed as the dominant text. They also noted that Kittel's content choices played a large role in defining the field of

. The book is a classic textbook in the subject and has seen use as a comparative benchmark in the reviews of other books in condensed matter physics. In a 1969 review of another book,

Robert G. Chambers Robert G. (Bob) Chambers (1924 – 17 December 2016) was a British physicist. He won the 1994 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society "for his many contributions to solid-state physics, in particular his ingenious and technically demanding experiment ...

noted that there were not many textbooks covering these topics, as "since 1953, Kittel's classic ''Introduction to Solid State Physics'' has dominated the field so effectively that few competitors have appeared", noting that the third edition continues that legacy. Before continuing, the reviewer noted that the book was too long for some uses and that less thorough works would be welcome. * Several notable reviews of the first edition were published in 1954, including Arthur James Cochran Wilson,

Leslie Fleetwood Bates Leslie Fleetwood Bates, Order of the British Empire, CBE, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (7 March 1897 – 20 January 1978) was an English physicist known for his contributions to ferromagnetism. He was Lancashire-Spencer Professor of Physics at ...

, and Kenneth Standley, among others. * Gwyn Owain Jones reviewed the book in 1955. * The second edition of the book was reviewed by Robert W. Hellwarth in 1957 and

, among others. * The third edition of the book also received reviews, including one by Donald F. Holcomb. * A German translation of the book has also received several reviews.

Publication history

Original editions

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Reprints

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Foreign translations

References

External links

* * {{Cite web, title=Remembering Charles Kittel {{! UC Berkeley Physics, url=https://physics.berkeley.edu/news-events/news/20190516/remembering-charles-kittel, access-date=2020-11-02, website=physics.berkeley.edu 1953 non-fiction books 1956 non-fiction books 1967 non-fiction books 1971 non-fiction books 1976 non-fiction books 1986 non-fiction books 1996 non-fiction books 2005 non-fiction books 2018 non-fiction books Physics textbooks Condensed matter physics