A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field

T F Torrence (ed) 1982 Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press xiii + 103 pp price £7.50 In 1865 James Clerk Maxwell published in the Philosophical Transactions a long paper entitled 'A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field'. In this work, about which he wrote to a relative, 'I have a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced of the contrary, Ihold to be great guns', he set up the electromagnetic field equations unifying electricity and magnetism, and identified light as 'an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws'.