“PROBABLY, AFTER NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA, THE MOST RENOWNED BOOK IN THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS": MAXWELL’S TREATISE ON ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM, 1873

MAXWELL, James Clerk. A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873. Two volumes. Octavo, original maroon cloth boards sympathetically rebacked, gilt-stamped spines, uncut.

First edition, first issue, of Maxwell’s most detailed and comprehensive work, advancing ideas that would become essential for modern physics, including the landmark hypothesis that light and electricity are the same in their ultimate nature.

"Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is probably, after Newton's Principia, the most renowned book in the history of physics. It was published in 1873 and has been in continuous use ever since. In 1000 pages of crisply written text and mathematics it encompasses virtually everything that was known about electricity and magnetism. It has inspired most of the work done in the subject ever since" (Mahon, 2003, The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell). In Maxwell's 1865 paper on this subject, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (PMM 355), he had articulated the theme which grew into this 1873 opus. The Treatise "extended Maxwell's ideas beyond the scope of his earlier work in many directions, producing a highly fecund… demonstration of the special importance of electricity to physics as a whole. He began the investigation of moving frames of reference, which in Einstein's hands were to revolutionize physics; gave proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves that paved the way for Hertz's discovery of radio waves; worked out connections between the electrical and optical qualities of bodies that would lead to modern solid-state physics; and applied Tait's quaternion formulae to the field equations, out of which Heaviside and Gibbs would develop vector analysis" (Norman 1466). "Einstein's work on relativity was founded directly upon Maxwell's electromagnetic theory; it was this that led him to equate… Maxwell with Newton" (see PMM 355). With half titles and 21 plates (one opposite p. 148 of Vol. I, thirteen at the end of Vol. I, and seven at the end of Vol. II). With the errata slip in Volume I, but not in Volume II, as is the case in other first issue printings. Copies of the first issue have been found both with and without a publisher's catalogue bound in Volume II (the text of which contains an issue point); this copy is bound without the catalogue. Small clipping (about 1 inch by 2 inches) of erratum for an equation pasted to verso of Vol II title page, with no corresponding equation found in Volume II. Horblit 72. Norman 1466. Simmons, Scientific 100, 64.

Text and plates clean with a few pencil or black ink annotations in a very small and neat hand; original cloth boards about-fine with only slightest wear to edges, expertly rebacked by the Wyvern bindery, London. An excellent copy of this rare and most influential work.