A treatise on electricity and magnetism

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

This record preserves its author, date and source link. Open HN to read the full context.

…econd his recommendation to read original works. Be aware, though, that this recommendation does have a flip side. I haven't tried to read Maxwell's original Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism , but I've heard it said that it's really, really difficult to get through. The fact that Maxwell's equations, the marvel of their era, are now a subject for second-year undergraduates is due to Oliver Heaviside's later work. From Wikipedia: In 1884 [Heaviside] recast Maxwell's mathematical analysis from its original cumbersome form (they had already been recast as quaternions) to its modern vector terminology, thereby reducing the original twenty equations in twenty unknowns down to the four differential equations in two unknowns we now know as Maxwell's equations. Just imagine Maxwell's equations as a system of 20 simultaneous equations. Now ma…