L'électrodynamique des milieux isotropes en repos d'après Helmholtz et Duhem

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Duhem was a pitiless critic of Maxwell’s theory, claiming that it not only lacked rigorous foundation but was not sufficiently general to explain the existence of permanent magnets (Les théories électriques de J. Clerk Maxwell [1902]). Similar reservations about lack of rigor were expressed by many Continental physicists (e.g., Poincaré), and Helmholtz worked out his own electromagnetic theory because of his dissatisfaction with Maxwell’s approach. Duhem later admitted that not only had his criticisms not been accepted, they had not even been read or discussed; and of course Maxwell’s theory has triumphed. However, both L. Roy15 and A. O’Rahilly16 have contended that the logical derivation of Maxwell’s equations from a continuum viewpoint comes best through the Helmholtz-Duhem theory with the proper choice of constants.

15. L. Roy, L’électrodynamique des milieux isotropes en repos d’aprés Helmholtz et Duhem (Paris, 1923).

16. A. O’Rahilly, Electromagnetics (London, 1938), ch. 5; repr. as Electromagnetic Theory, 2 vols. (New York, 1965).

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