Ampère's force law masterpiece in English

Ampère's Electrodynamics: Analysis of the Meaning and Evolution of Ampère's Force between Current Elements, together with a Complete Translation of ... Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience by André Koch Torres Assis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Free complete PDF version of this book available here.

This is the first published English translation of Ampère's masterpiece, Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite de l’expérience (cf. Godfrey's unpublished one).

Assis & Chaib give an excellent introduction to Ampère's work, as well as many computer-generated illustrations of Ampère's ingenious experiments.

It is enough to quote Maxwell on the importance of Ampère's work:

The experimental investigation by which Ampère established the laws of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the ‘Newton of electricity.’ It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electrodynamics.

Also, Ampère invented the word "electrodynamics"! ☺

This work shows how Ampère experimentally determined the so-called Ampère force law (not to be confused with one of Maxwell's equations, called Ampère's circuital law, which has nothing to do with Ampère besides dealing with currents, as Ampère did not deal with the field concept).

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