Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism

Abstract

THE supplementary volume to Maxwell's “Electricity” which it was announced the present occupant of Maxwell's chair in the University of Cambridge had in preparation, was looked forward to with keen interest by all electricians. It was sure, of course, to be a work of great scientific importance; but it was awaited with all the more impatience because certain promises and allusions in the new edition of Maxwell's treatise, lately published under Prof. Thomson's editorship, had led to pleasant anticipations that the supplement would be more or less of a commentary on the treatise, and would deal with some of the outstanding difficulties of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. One promise in particular, made in the notes on the Electricity, we looked forward to seeing fulfilled in the supplementary volume, that of further discussion of the Maxwellian stress in the electromagnetic field. It is just here that the greatest difficulties of Maxwell's theory present themselves to some at least, and that a commentary such as the author could have written would have been particularly valuable.

Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, intended as a sequel to Prof. Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.

By J. J. Thomson, &c., Professor of Experimental Physics in the University of Cambridge. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1893.)