Andre K. T. Assis Publishes Five Volumes(!) of Translations of Wilhelm Weber's Electrodynamics
In the 50 odd years between 1820 and 1873, the study of electrodynamics went from a wholly new discovery to a mature and practicable field of work. This sort of development is rare in science - a field born and rapidly developed within two generations. I think perhaps only quantum theory and maybe chemistry have any claim to comparison with the swiftness and significance of this kind of revolution. But the familiar achievements of Maxwell, Gauss, Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Heaviside, etc. tell only part of the story, the part that "won out" in the end, receiving wide adoption. Before settling on Maxwell's electrodynamics, we had the theory of Wilhelm Weber (1804-1891), which aimed at uniting electrostatics (based on Coulomb's law) with electrodynamics (based on Ampère's forces between units of current, and Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction). Building upon the theoretical foundation of Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 - 1887), who was otherwise known for expe...