Details
MAXWELL, James Clerk (1831-1879). A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873.
2 volumes, 8o (215 x 136 mm). Half-titles, errata leaves in each volume, line block figures and two wood engravings in text, 21 lithographic plates. 1:Ff2 blank removed; without the 8-leaf publisher's catalog sometimes bound at the end of vol. 2. (A few insignificant small stains.) Contemporary calf gilt prize binding, arms of Trinity College, Cambridge on sides and upper and lower compartments of spines, red and black calf lettering-pieces (joints, backstrips and extremities worn).
Provenance: Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940), discoverer of the electron, Nobel Laureate (1906), president of the Royal Society (from 1915), disciple of Maxwell and editor of the third edition of Maxwell's Treatise (bookplate stating that the copy was awarded to Thomson as a first class prize for his placement in the freshman examination at Trinity College, dated June 1877; his marginal pencil and ink annotations on approximately 20 pages).
IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION, second issue, with the errata leaves, of Maxwell's major work, which demonstrated the importance of electricity to physics as a whole. The Treatise on Electricity inaugurated the second of two major periods in Maxwell's researches into electricity and electromagnetism. An extremely difficult book, "the position of the Treatise is peculiar. Most readers come to it expecting a systematic exposition of its author's ideas which makes further reference to earlier writings unnecessary. With many writers the expectation might be legitimate; with Maxwell it is a mistake... The truth is that by 1868 Maxwell had already begun to think beyond his theory. He saw electricity not as just another branch of physics but... 'as an aid to the interpretation of nature... and [as a means of] promoting the progress of science' [Preface, p. vii]. Wishing, therefore, to follow up questions with wider scientific ramifications, he gave the Treatise a loose-knit structure, organized on historical and experimental rather than deductive lines" (DSB). One of the consequences of Maxwell's earlier field-theory (see preceding lot) was "that an electromagnetic disturbance, or wave, should travel through space with the speed of light, a circumstance impelling Maxwell to define light as an electromagnetic phenomenon" (PMM 355), a correspondence later demonstrated by Hertz. Thus stated, this proposition is perhaps the most easily grasped by the layman of all those set forth in Maxwell's Treatise, which also includes an "investigation of moving frames of references, which in Einstein's hands were to revolutionize physics; [and] proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves" (Norman).
This copy is of the greatest historic importance, having been owned and annotated by Maxwell's disciple the physicist J. J. Thomson, Maxwell's successor at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge and the continuator of his work. Given to Thomson as a freshman at Cambridge, this copy is likely to have been the stimulus for his interest in Maxwell's work, which determined the direction of his entire scientific career. Although the two never met, Thomson's scientific work was so closely linked with that of his predecessor as to be impossible to describe separately (DSB). The occasional notes in this copy may have served for Thomson's preparation of a third edition of Maxwell's work, published in 1891, and for his 1893 supplement to the Treatise (Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, see lot 1322) which deals largely with the solution of various extremely complex mathematical problems. Grolier/Horblit 72; Wheeler Gift Catalogue 1872; Norman 1466. (2)
2 volumes, 8
Provenance: Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940), discoverer of the electron, Nobel Laureate (1906), president of the Royal Society (from 1915), disciple of Maxwell and editor of the third edition of Maxwell's Treatise (bookplate stating that the copy was awarded to Thomson as a first class prize for his placement in the freshman examination at Trinity College, dated June 1877; his marginal pencil and ink annotations on approximately 20 pages).
IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION, second issue, with the errata leaves, of Maxwell's major work, which demonstrated the importance of electricity to physics as a whole. The Treatise on Electricity inaugurated the second of two major periods in Maxwell's researches into electricity and electromagnetism. An extremely difficult book, "the position of the Treatise is peculiar. Most readers come to it expecting a systematic exposition of its author's ideas which makes further reference to earlier writings unnecessary. With many writers the expectation might be legitimate; with Maxwell it is a mistake... The truth is that by 1868 Maxwell had already begun to think beyond his theory. He saw electricity not as just another branch of physics but... 'as an aid to the interpretation of nature... and [as a means of] promoting the progress of science' [Preface, p. vii]. Wishing, therefore, to follow up questions with wider scientific ramifications, he gave the Treatise a loose-knit structure, organized on historical and experimental rather than deductive lines" (DSB). One of the consequences of Maxwell's earlier field-theory (see preceding lot) was "that an electromagnetic disturbance, or wave, should travel through space with the speed of light, a circumstance impelling Maxwell to define light as an electromagnetic phenomenon" (PMM 355), a correspondence later demonstrated by Hertz. Thus stated, this proposition is perhaps the most easily grasped by the layman of all those set forth in Maxwell's Treatise, which also includes an "investigation of moving frames of references, which in Einstein's hands were to revolutionize physics; [and] proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves" (Norman).
This copy is of the greatest historic importance, having been owned and annotated by Maxwell's disciple the physicist J. J. Thomson, Maxwell's successor at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge and the continuator of his work. Given to Thomson as a freshman at Cambridge, this copy is likely to have been the stimulus for his interest in Maxwell's work, which determined the direction of his entire scientific career. Although the two never met, Thomson's scientific work was so closely linked with that of his predecessor as to be impossible to describe separately (DSB). The occasional notes in this copy may have served for Thomson's preparation of a third edition of Maxwell's work, published in 1891, and for his 1893 supplement to the Treatise (Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, see lot 1322) which deals largely with the solution of various extremely complex mathematical problems. Grolier/Horblit 72; Wheeler Gift Catalogue 1872; Norman 1466. (2)