A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Vol. 1: Volume 1

by James Clerk Maxwell and William Davidson Niven

Book Overview

Described by Einstein as "the most important event in physics since Newton's time," the discovery by James Clerk Maxwell that a vast array of phenomena could be united by four elegant formulas remains... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486606368
• ISBN13: 9780486606361
• Release Date: June 1954
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism by Maxwell

Quick delivery. High quality product. Fantastic amounts of technical info. Superbly written. Very happy customer.

Back to the 19th Century

It's reading such a book we can understand how powerfull was the 19th Century scientific thought. Maxwell, was a genius as was Newton and Einstein, his book is didactic and clear. A must have.

This book is the fountainhead of physics

I suggest that some reviewers miss the significance of Maxwell's book Electricity and Magnetism. First, it introduced "Dimensional Analysis" which is the standard against which ALL physics models must be tested. Equations are maths. Units are politics. Dimensional Analysis is physics. ( If a model doesn't fit Maxwell's Dimensions, it is not correct.) Secondly, Maxwell established the framework for Quantum Mechanics when he showed that statistics, rather than two-body math, is required to model multi-body systems. Thirdly, Maxwell established the framework for modern atomic theory by postulating dimensionless points, and assembling the points into atoms, molecules, and larger structures, while leaving room for finer complex assembles of points such as quarks and neutrinos. Fourthly, Maxwell laid the ground work for the Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distributions, which are slight modifications of Maxwell's distribution to account for the separation of matter into two classes, bosons and fermions. Fifthly, Einstein's much touted paper on Brownian movement is a variation of Maxwell's more comprehensive treatment of the velocity distribution of particles. Just as most historians parrot Herodotus, most physicists parrot Maxwell, but none come close to the masters. Maxwell was the fountainhead of modern physics, and this book is his best.

A classic that still is worth reading

Whenever I teach a course which touches on electric or magnetic phenomena I find myself going through this book. It works well with the early chapters of Jackson, in particular, and Smythe. Maxwell knew the subject thoroughly, up to the 1870s (and much of this material has since dropped out of courses and almost out of memory), his thinking was both profound and clear, and he may well be the best writer on physics in the English language. His proofs are economical and elegant. Oh yes - this book is still a good reference for the treatment of spherical harmonics and multipole expansions in Cartesian coordinates.

Electricity & Magnetism defined mathematically

The book in my opinion coming from a calculus III student is very rigorous and one needs to have a firm foundation on Mathematics I would say about calc III or better to even try to read this book. So far I have just started but every page is exciting because he goes into a deep explanation of what is happening and going on physically and mathematically. Not to mentioned his work is very organized.