A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity is any of three books written by British mathematician Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker FRS FRSE on the history of electromagnetic theory, covering the development of classical electromagnetism, optics, and aether theories. The book's first edition, subtitled from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1910 by Longmans, Green. The book covers the history of aether theories and the development of electromagnetic theory up to the 20th century. A second, extended and revised, edition consisting of two volumes was released in the early 1950s by Thomas Nelson, expanding the book's scope to include the first quarter of the 20th century. The first volume, subtitled The Classical Theories, was published in 1951 and served as a revised and updated edition to the first book. The second volume, subtitled The Modern Theories (1900–1926), was published two years later in 1953, extended this work covering the years 1900 to 1926. Notwithstanding a notorious controversy on Whittaker's views on the history of special relativity, covered in volume two of the second edition, the books are considered authoritative references on the history of electricity and magnetism as well as classics in the history of physics.
The original book was well-received, but it ran out of print by the early 1920s. Whittaker believed that a new edition should include the developments in physics that took part at the turn of the twentieth century and declined to have it reprinted. He wrote the second edition of the book after his retirement and published The Classical Theories in 1951, which also received critical acclaim. In the 1953 second volume, The Modern Theories (1900–1926), Whittaker argued that Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz developed the theory of special relativity before Albert Einstein, a claim that has been rejected by most historians of science. Though overall reviews of the book were generally positive, due to its role in this relativity priority dispute, it receives far fewer citations than the other volumes, outside of references to the controversy.
Background
The book was originally written in the period immediately following the publication of Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers and several years following the early work of Max Planck; it was a transitional period for physics, where special relativity and old quantum theory were gaining traction. The book serves to document the developments of electricity and magnetism before the quantum revolution and the birth of quantum mechanics. Whittaker was an established mathematician by the publication of this book, and he brought unique qualifications to its authorship. As a teacher at Trinity College, beginning after his election as a fellow in 1896, Whittaker gave advanced lectures in spectroscopy, astrophysics, and electro-optics. His first book, Modern Analysis, was initially published in 1902 and remained a standard reference for applied mathematicians. His second major release, Analytical Dynamics, a mathematical physics textbook, was published in 1906 and was, according to Victor Lenzen in 1952, "still the best exposition of the subject on the highest possible level".
Whittaker wrote the first edition in his spare time while he was thirty-seven years old, during which time he was serving as Royal Astronomer of Ireland from 1906 onwards. The post's relative ease allowed him to devote time to reading for the project, which he worked on until its release in 1910. During this same period, Whittaker also published the book The theory of optical instruments in 1907 as well as publish eight papers, with six in astronomy, during the same period. He also continued performing fundamental research in analytical dynamics at Trinity College in Dublin throughout this period.
The original version of the book was universally praised and was considered an authoritative reference work in the history of physics, despite its difficulty to obtain past the 1920s. When the first edition of the book ran out of print, there was a long delay before the publication of the revised edition in 1951 and 1953. The delay was due, in Whittaker's own words, to his view that "any new issue should describe the origins of relativity and quantum theory, and their development since 1900". The task required more time than his career as a mathematician allowed for, so the project was put on hold until he retired from his professorship at the University of Edinburgh in 1946.
From the age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century The first edition of the book, written in 1910, gives a detailed account of the aether theories and their development from René Descartes to Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein, including the contributions of Hermann Minkowski. The volume focuses heavily on aether theories, Michael Faraday, and James Clerk Maxwell, devoting each one or more chapters. It was well-received and established Whittaker as a respected historian of science. The book ran out of print and was unavailable for many years before the publication of the second edition, as Whittaker declined to reprint it. Published in the United States prior to 1925, the book is now in the public domain in the United States and has been reprinted by several publishers.
Summary + 1st edition contents # Title1The theory of the aether in the seventeenth century2Electric and magnetic science, prior to the introduction of the potentials3Galvanism, from Galvani to Ohm4The luminiferous medium, from Bradley to Fresnel5The aether as an elastic solid6Faraday7The mathematical electricians of the middle of the nineteenth century8Maxwell9Models of the aether10The followers of Maxwell11Conduction in solutions and gases, from Faraday to J. J. Thomson12The theory of aether and electrons in the closing years of the nineteenth century
The book consists of twelve chapters that begin with a discussion on the theories of aether in the 17th century, focusing heavily on René Descartes, and end with a discussion of electronics and the theories of aether at the close of the 19th century, extensively covering contributions from Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and J. J. Thomson. The book follows logical sequences of development, so the chapters are somewhat independent; the book is not fully chronological. The book uses vector analysis throughout and there is an explanatory table at the beginning of the book for those unfamiliar with vector notation.
The first chapter covers the 17th-century development of the theory of aether. Beginning with Descartes' conjectures, the chapter focuses on contributions from Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton while it highlights the work of Petrus Peregrinus, William Gilbert, Pierre de Fermat, Robert Hooke, Galileo, and Ole Rømer. Chapter 2 covers the initial mathematical development of the magnetic field before the introduction of the vector potential and scalar potential, covering action at a distance. The third chapter covers galvanism, beginning with Luigi Galvani and extending through Georg Ohm's theory of the circuit. Chapter 4 covers the early developments of the luminiferous aether theories stretch from James Bradley to Augustin-Jean Fresnel. The fifth chapter covers the developments that mostly take place over the first half of the nineteenth century, with some contributions by Joseph Valentin Boussinesq and Lord Kelvin. Here the idea of the luminiferous aether is modelled as an elastic solid. Chapter 6 focuses almost exclusively on the experiments of Michael Faraday. Chapter seven discusses the mathematicians who worked after Faraday but before James Clerk Maxwell and who adopted views of action at a distance over Faraday's lines of force. The chapter includes a discussion of the contributions made by Franz Neumann, Wilhelm Eduard Weber, Bernhard Riemann, James Prescott Joule, Hermann von Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin, Gustav Kirchhoff, and Jean Peltier. Chapter 8 focuses on Maxwell's contributions to electromagnetism and Chapter 9 details further developments to the models of aether made after Maxwell's publications. Contributions by Lord Kelvin, Carl Anton Bjerknes, James MacCullagh, Bernhard Riemann, George Francis FitzGerald, and William Mitchinson Hicks. The tenth chapter covers physicists following in Maxwell's tracks in the mid-nineteenth century, with contributions from Helmholtz, Fitzgerald, Weber, Hendrik Lorentz, H. A. Rowland, J. J. Thomson, Oliver Heaviside, John Henry Poynting, Heinrich Hertz, and John Kerr. Chapter 11 covers the conduction in solids and gases extending from Faraday's work, covered in chapter six, to that of J. J. Thomson while the final chapter gives an account of the theories of aether in the late 1800s, ending with Owen Willans Richardson's work at the turn of the century.
Reviews The book received several reviews in 1911, including one by the physicist C. M. Sparrow. Sparrow wrote that the book lives up to the legacy left by Whittaker's A Course in Modern Analysis and A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies. He then noted several expandable areas of the book before he went on to state: "That some slight errors or inaccuracies should creep into a book of this nature is to be expected, but the one or two we have observed are of too trivial a character to deserve mention, and affect in no way the general excellence of the work. The book is attractively printed and remarkably free from misprints." Another 1911 review of the book deemed it an "excellent volume" and predicted that it "will be welcomed by all physicists as a valuable contribution". A third 1911 review of the book praised it for its careful depiction of the developments, asserting "the treatment of the more important advances, without being [exhaustive], is sufficiently adequate to define them clearly in their historical setting".
Among other reviewers, E. B. Wilson, in a 1913 review, noted one theory that Whittaker overlooked before going on to say: "To go into further detail with regard[s] to the contents of this History, which should and will be widely read, is needless. Suffice it to say that a careful study of all of the work twice, and of many portions of it several times, leaves but one resolution, namely, to continue the study indefinitely; for there is always something new to learn where so much material is so well presented." A second 1913 review, by Herbert Hall Turner wrote that the "book is probably the greatest act of piety towards the past which has been produced in this generation" and that it "would seem advisable to keep the book on one of the easily accessible shelves of the study, where it may be referred to constantly". The book also received a positive review in Italian in 1914.
Several reviewers of the first volume of the second edition praised this edition in their reviews. A. M. Tyndall, wrote in 1951 that he remembered how pleasurable and enlightening reading this edition was forty-one years prior. Carl Eckart wrote in 1952 that the book "has been the authoritative reference work for the historical aspects of the theories of optics, electromagnetism, and the [a]ether". In 1952, Victor Lenzen wrote that the book was "without rival in its field". In his 1952 review, W. H. McCrea wrote that it "gave a superbly well-knit account of its subject".
Extended and revised edition