Dielectric breakdown

A digest of the papers on dielectric breakdown published in 1946–47 is given in Volume X of this series under the subtitle “High Voltage Phenomena”¹. At a symposium on dielectrics held in 1946 at Bristol University by the Faraday Society, Prof. A. von Hippel contributed a paper summarizing the results of previous work on dielectric breakdown in solids, and indicating the nature of existing problems². The following paragraphs are concerned essentially with the contributions to this subject published in 1947, but it will be convenient to describe the background very briefly.