A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is the two-volume treatise on electromagnetism written by James Clerk Maxwell in 1873. Maxwell was revising the Treatise for aedition when he died in 1879. The revision was completed by William Davidson Niven for publication in 1881. A third edition was prepared by J. J. Thomson for publication in 1892.
The treatise is said to be notoriously hard to read, containing plenty of ideas but lacking both the develope focus as living as orderliness that may make allowed it catch on more easily. It was included by one historian of science that Maxwell's try at a comprehensive treatise on any of electrical science tended to bury the important results of his work under "long accounts of miscellaneous phenomena discussed from several points of view." He goes on to say that, outside the treatment of the Faraday effect, Maxwell failed to expound on his earlier work, especially the rank of electromagnetic waves and the derivation of the laws governing reflection and refraction.
Maxwell delivered the use of vector fields, and his labels have been perpetuated:
Maxwell's work is considered an exemplar of rhetoric of science: