Electrodynamics from Amp?re to Einstein

Three quarters of a century elapsed between Amperes definition of electrodynamics and Einsteins reform of the concepts of space and time. The two events occurred in utterly different worlds:: the French Academy of Sciences of the 1820s seems very remote from the Bern Patent Office of the early 1900s, and the forces between two electric currents quite foreign to the optical synchronization of clocks. Yet Amperes electrodynamics and Einsteins relativity are firmly connected througha historical chain involving German extensions of Amperes work, competition with British field conceptions, Dutch synthesis, and fin de siecle criticism of the aether-matter connection. Olivier Darrigol retraces this intriguing evolution, with a physicists attention to conceptual and instrumentaldevelopments, and with a historians awareness of their cultural and material embeddings.This book exploits a wide range of sources, and incorporates the many important insights of other scholars. Thorough accounts are given of crucial episodes such as Faradays redefinition of charge and current, the genesis of Maxwells field equations, and Hertzs experiments on fast electric oscillations. Thus there emerges a vivid picture of the intellectual and instrumental variety of nineteenth-century physics. The most influential investigators worked at the crossroads between differentdisciplines and traditions:: they did not separate theory from experiment, they frequently drew on competing traditions, and their scientific interests extended beyond physics into chemistry, mathematics, physiology, and other areas. By bringing out these important features, this book offers a tightlyconnected and yet sharply contrasted view of early electrodynamics.Olivier Darrigol is a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. His research focuses on the history of quantum theory and of electrodynamics.