Atticus Rare Books

A Dynamical Theory of the Electric and Luminiferous Medium, Part III. Relations with Material Media Offprint from Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 61 pp. 272-285, 1897 [LORENTZ TRANSFORMATION & MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS]

Larmor, Joseph

1897. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT ISSUE, OF LARMOR’S FAMOUS PAPER INTRODUCING THE FIRST FORMULATION OF WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS THE LORENTZ-TRANSFORMATION (or transformations), INCLUDING THE FIRST UNDERSTANDING AND PREDICTION OF THE CRUCIAL TIME DILATION & LENGTH CONTRACTION PROPERTIES INHERENT IN MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS. The transformation is “a general approach to how the distance and time measurements of two observers moving at different velocities can be transformed into each other’s frames of reference” (History of Physics: The Wenner Collection). The offprint is housed in a custom leather clamshell case.

This offprint is the important first announcement of Larmor’s formulation and prediction. Later in the same year he developed his thoughts further those appeared in the Philosophical Transactions. To a collector, the announcement (particularly in offprint form) is the most desirable.

“One of the interesting historical aspects of the modern relativity theory is that, although often regarded as the highly original and even revolutionary contribution of a single individual, almost every idea and formula of the theory had been anticipated by others. For example, Lorentz covariance and the inertia of electromagnetic energy were both (arguably) implicit in Maxwell’s equations” – in other words, Maxwell anticipated them (Brown, Reflections on Relativity, 8.8). This paper presents what the Irish mathematician Joseph Larmor ‘anticipated’ – specifically, the Lorentz transformation, the formulation of which Larmor presents here. Larmor’s work is in accordance with special relativity, but was derived before it.

In the late 19th century, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, Joseph Larmor (and others) worked to understand a number of issues, among them, the symmetries of the laws of electromagnetism and why the speed of light was could be observed as independent of its frame of reference. Oliver Heaviside had recently employed Maxwell’s equations to demonstrate that the electric field surrounding a spherical distribution of charge should cease to have spherical symmetry once the charge is in motion relative to the ether. Both Lorentz and Larmor sought the transformation under which Maxwell’s equations were invariant when transformed from the ether to a moving frame.

Larmor got there first. Two years prior to Lorentz himself, Larmor derived his equations and “developed a model in which all forces are considered to be of electromagnetic origin [with] length contraction and time dilation being direct consequences of the model” (Wenner). With this work, Larmor demonstrated that he was the first to understand the crucial time dilation and length contraction property inherent in Maxwell’s equations.

The Lorentz transformation eliminated many of the contradictions between the theories of electromagnetism and classical mechanics and in so doing, superseded the Galilean relativity of Newtonian physics which assumes an absolute space and time. Some historians of science believe that Einstein was aware of Larmor’s equations and employed them in his theory of special relativity; certainly Einstein “re-derived the transformation[s] from his postulates of special relativity” (Byrd, Paths to Dark Energy, 6). Item #1062

CONDITION & DETAILS: The offprint is in near-fine condition (some sun darkening overall and a bit of light staining on the rear wrapper), and is housed in a custom leather clamshell box, gilt-lettered at the spine and on the front.

Price: $1,100.00