Maxwell's Enduring Legacy

Malcolm Longair is Emeritus Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy and Director of Development at the Cavendish Laboratory. He was appointed the ninth Astronomer Royal of Scotland in 1980, as well as the Regius Professor of Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, and the director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. He was head of the Cavendish Laboratory from 1997 to 2005 and he has served on and chaired many international committees, boards and panels, working with both NASA and the European Space Agency. He has received much recognition for his work over the years, including a CBE in the millennium honours list for his services to astronomy and cosmology.

'In what is patently a labour of love, the astronomer Malcolm Longair now gives us a comprehensive scientific history of the Cavendish in Maxwell's Enduring Legacy. Longair, who was the lab's head from 1997 to 2005, describes its inception well … Longair's history is in the form of a well-organized modern physics book, most of its twenty-two sections replete with charts, tables and lucid technical explanations presented neatly in boxes. Abundant diagrams, photographs, line drawings, floor-plans and facsimiles of historical documents give fascinating insights into the lab's development.' Graham Farmelo, Nature

• Preface; Acknowledgements; Figure credits; Part I. To 1874: 1. Physics in the nineteenth century; 2. Mathematics and physics in Cambridge in the nineteenth century; Part II. 1874 to 1879: 3. The Maxwell era; Part III. 1879 to 1884: 4. Rayleigh's Quinquennium; Part IV. 1884 to 1919: 5. The challenges facing J. J. Thomson; 6. The J. J. Thomson era, 1884–1900 - the electron; 7. The Thomson era, 1900–19 - atomic structure; Part V. 1919 to 1937: 8. Rutherford at McGill and Manchester Universities - new challenges in Cambridge; 9. The Rutherford era - the radioactivists; 10. Rutherford era - the seeds of the new physics; Part VI. 1938 to 1953: 11. Bragg and the war years; 12. Bragg and the post-war years; Part VII. 1953 to 1971: 13. The Mott era - an epoch of expansion; 14. The Mott era - radio astronomy and high energy physics; 15. The Mott era - the growth of condensed matter physics; Part VIII. 1971 to 1982: 16. The Pippard era - a new laboratory and a new vision; 17. The Pippard era - radio astronomy, high energy physics and laboratory astrophysics; 18. The Pippard era - condensed matter physics; Part IX. 1984 to 1995: 19. The Edwards era - a new epoch of expansion; 20. The Edwards era - new directions in condensed matter physics; 21. The Edwards era - high energy physics and radio astronomy; Part X. 1995 to present: 22. Towards the new millennium and beyond; 23. The evolution of the New Museums site; Notes; Bibliography; Author index; Index.