[34], In a 1954 review Rolf Hagedorn states that "One need read only a few pages of the book to sense the thoroughness and conscientiousness of the whole work". He closes by saying that the "astonishing quantity and quality of his work is probably unparalleled in modern mathematics and it is most appropriate that the Royal Society should confer on Whittaker its most distinguished award", referring to Whittaker's receipt of the Copley Medal in 1954. [1] Miller, in his 1981 book, writes that the "lack of historic credibility"[56] of the second chapter had been "demonstrated effectively" by Holton's 1960 article[44] on the origins of special relativity. [31] Chapter two discusses is on the origins of special relativity and is highly controversial, and is the base of Whittaker's role in the relativity priority dispute. Outside of physics we know nothing of action at a distance. It is however, by it's nature, incomplete and it must be stressed "[62], In his explicit rebuttal of 1960, Holton notes that Einstein's paper "was indeed one of a number of contributions by many different authors",[44] but goes on to point out that Whittaker's assessment was lacking and plainly wrong at places.
[10] Chapter eleven was renamed to conduction in solutions and gases, from Faraday to the discovery of the electron in the new edition. The ether does not exist at all. at the heart of all electromagnetic theory. It appeared beyond question that light must be interpreted as a vibratory process in an elastic, inert medium filling up universal space.It also seemed to be a necessary consequence of the fact that light is capable of polarisation that this medium, the ether, must be of the nature of a solid body, because transverse waves are not possible in a fluid, but only in a solid. Chapter 5 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. Whittaker was an established mathematician by the publication of this book, and he brought unique qualifications to its authorship. Chapter 10 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. A few years after the Michelson-Morley experiments were published, Hendrik Lorentz suggested the experiment apparatus failed to consider length contraction in the direction of motion. It is not only Meta in Any theory of waves that relies on the existence of an aether must explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. It is, rather, a thorough and authoritative chronicle of the development of theoretical physics from in the period 1900-1926, including atomic structure, special relativity, [old] quantum theory, general relativity, matrix mechanics, and wave mechanics". [7] He told Einstein that Whittaker insists that all the important featured were developed by Poincare while Lorentz "quite plainly had the physical interpretation". [5] Whittaker believed that a new edition of it should include the developments in physics that took part at the turn of the twentieth century and declined to have it reprinted. Required fields are marked *. [34] He singles out the then-recently published second volume as a "great work" which gives "a critical appreciation of the development of physical theory up to the year 1925. A 1911 review of the book by the physicist Carroll Mason Sparrow, notes 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. For Maxwell himself the ether indeed still had properties which were purely mechanical, although of a much more complicated kind than the mechanical properties of tangible solid bodies. format but in name as well.
standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity refers to one 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 first edition was published in 1910 with the subtitle from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century. These ideas were expanded later with more specific vortex model by Christian Huygens (1669-1690) and model the Essential flow and Newton’s theory of gravity in particular (Principia ~1686, Optics). "[21], 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. space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for The aether is a critical, missing component of physics that must be considered to explain the wave nature of matter. The aether exists and it is the medium for propagating light and other longitudinal and transverse (electromagnetic) waves across the universe. And she was right. 2. [47] He continues saying "Einstein played a unique role in establishing the universal validity of the principle of relativity and in revealing and capitalizing on its radical implications. ...meta data. [4] He says that book's greatest weakness is that it lacks a "real historical sense", that it misses wider contexts and is therefore incomplete, as it focuses on theories rather than people. Modify the theory to reduce to zero the resultant force on an element of free aether (as with Maxwell, Hertz, and Einstein); Assume the force sets aether in motion (as with Helmholtz); Accept the principle that aether is the vehicle of mechanical momentum of amount It is the basis of understanding. [70], In one of Whittaker's 1958 obituaries, WIlliam Hunter McCrea remarks that the books are achievements so remarkable that "as time passes, the risk will be of all Whittaker's other great achievements tending to be overlooked in comparison. Everybody does what he considers right or, in deterministic terms, what he has to do. why one must add here or subtract there; to connect theory back to reality so that -never again- An Address delivered on May 5th, 1920,in the University of Leyden. The electromagnetic fields are not states of a medium, and are not bound down to any bearer, but they are independent realities which are not reducible to anything else, exactly like the atoms of ponderable matter. [62] This, for Born, "distinguishes Einstein’s work from his predecessors and gives us the right to speak of Einstein’s theory of relativity, in spite of Whittaker’s different opinion.