For a brief period during the latter part of World War II, N. F. Mott, then professor of physics at the University of Bristol, later knighted and a Nobel laureate, undertook the theoretical description of the statistical fragmentation of bodies subjected to intense impulsive loads. Some of his most innovative ideas on the micromechanical and molecular aspects of fracture are included in his subsequent publications. But it is Motts original publications where the seminal theoretical concepts from which numerous later modeling efforts and engineering formulae emerged. Mott's presentation is...