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Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd ed., by Edward Purcell

Article  in  Contemporary Physics · May 2012

DOI: 10.1080/00107514.2012.661792

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 Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd edition
Edward Purcell
Cambridge University Press
2011
475 pages
price 40 GBP
hardcover
ISBN 9781107013605
textbook
undergraduate students
Dr. Manuel Vogel, TU Darmstadt and GSI Darmstadt, m.vogel@gsi.de

This is the second edition of Edward Purcell's classic textbook "Electricity and Magnetism", following
the first edition which has been published in 1963 by the Education Development Center. Prior to the
publication in the present second edition by Cambridge University Press, this text has been published
already in 1985 by McGraw-Hill. It is the revision of the original second volume of the five-volume
Berkeley Physics Course consisting of Mechanics (Kittel), Electricity and Magnetism (Purcell), Waves
and Oscillations (Crawford), Quantum Physics (Wichmann), and Statistical Physics (Reif). This is a
famous two-year college physics course for science and engineering students developed in the
1960ies at the University of California, Berkeley. The present edition is an effort to make this a stand-
alone text book, without embedment into the five-volume course. According to the preface, this goes
back to the fact that volume 2 was rather widely used alone. Its author is the 1952 Nobel laureate
Edward M. Purcell from Harvard University who has done groundbreaking work on nuclear magnetic
resonance in fluids and solids. The present book is an introduction to the world of electricity and
magnetism in the best manner of a textbook for students. As such, it provides thorough discussion of
all relevant topics from electrostatics and magnetostatics to Maxwell's equations with showcase
experiments depicted in numerous black and white figures.
The table of contents: Electrostatics: Charges and Fields, The Electric Potential, Electric Fields around
Conductors, Electric Currents, The Fields of Moving Charges, The Magnetic Field, Electromagnetic
Induction, Alternating-Current Circuits, Maxwell's Equations and Electromagnetic Waves, Electric
Fields in Matter and Magnetic Fields in Matter with appendices on Special Relativity, Accelerated
Charges, Superconductivity, Magnetic Resonance and The relation between CGS and SI units.
The main text has 475 pages with several hundreds of figures and a helpful index. There are
numerous end-of-chapter problems, however without solutions, which is the foremost criticism by
students who try to work solely with this book. Since there are only few calculation examples given in
the text, one may find it difficult to check the understanding of the presented material working with
this book alone. Criticism has also been put forward concerning the notation and the use of CGS units
instead of SI units. As an introductory textbook, it is completely unreferenced with the curious
exception of the beginning of chapter one. The typesetting and the figures are obviously dated but
nevertheless clear to understand. The print, the paper and the making of the book however are
good. Despite the criticism, this text is very beautifully written and gives well-structured and clear
insight into the topic. It is much-appraised and has become some sort of a standard not without good
reason. As such, it can be recommended to any student as a textbook accompanying a course in
electricity and magnetism.

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