Classical Electrodynamics

Hands down, this is our bible (physicists'). A careful study of Jackson knows no bounds (with eventual engineering applications). We don't put in the mathematics by fiat. Rather, it is a discovery as we try to understand what we now call gauge theory. The language of nature is apparently mathematics and I find that very beautiful. It's also amazing how Maxwell was prescient here with his focus on the vector potential A. Jackson is in tune with this and is a master at lucid rigorousness.

For a wide eyed young grad student this text can be (Was!) quite daunting, I used the 2nd edition with the Gaussian (CGS) units. The math needed to solve the problems is presented in a haphazard way, not systematically as a mathematician should present it but just given as techniques that work with particular problems-true of the 2nd as well as the 3rd. Bad. Derivations like in Lienard-Wiechert potentials are heuristic at best. The vector potential expressed as an integral over current density divided by distance seems to follow cogently-not rigorously.. Bad. What's good? A careful reading shows the author makes no attempt at an exhaustive comprehensive treatment but usually presents a brief description which happens to be good enough sometimes and gives the reader references to the more exhaustive treatments if not. I disparagingly called this a reference book because it gave you references-not the interpretation taken by my pipe smoking, ascot wearing comrades. Well in hindsight a complete exhaustive treatment of E&M has yet to be written. It branches off to various specialties. What a grad student needs is a guide and that's what Jackson is. The teacher probably should emphasize this point. The difficulty of the problems largely stems from not interpreting the problem correctly. You have to see what's being said-maybe diagram it. Jackson for many was their first exposure to problems that couldn't be solved in closed form-series solutions. We're comfortable with this in the computer age.

Absolutely what I was expecting or even better

Quick shipping and the book arrived in better than expected condition. Thank you.

I, like many others, used this book for graduate E&M. The text is easy to follow, however, for those who haven't seen the mathematical derivation techniques for quite some time, it is best to pause and take a moment reviewing how one equation becomes the succeeding equation. Jackson often, but not always, quotes what technique was involved so it shouldn't be too hard to look up vector identities and techniques involving standard functions (orthonormal, Green, etc.) in any advanced calculus text. For those who love the challenge of solving a variety of problems, this is your book. Jackson exercises your mind in such a way that you should find yourself pulling everything and anything you can remember (as far back as those unpleasant undergraduate days) applicable to the problem at hand and piece the puzzle together until you arrive at "a" solution. During my graduate studies, we used F. Melia's "Electrodynamics" alongside Jackson. However, it was extremely cumbersome working with something in Gaussian units and MKSA at the same time between the two books, but there was a good reason to use both. Melia's book was first written to accomodate Jackson's 2nd and other E&M books written in Gaussian units, so I'm sure that the 2nd edition Jackson would work very well with Melia's book. Melia most respectfully spells out the conceptual ideas (physics) for you and Jackson will nail you with the mathematical techniques involved, especially in his problem sets. Overall, I rate this a 4/5 stars simply because the 3rd edition used MKSA units, where I think Gaussian is much more elegant. Jackson explains why he decided to do this in the preface to the 3rd edition and it's all fair game. Use this book to brush up on your mathematical techniques. To be honest, Griffith's "Introduction to Electrodynamics" would be an excellent text to use before you even decide to read Jackson's or Melia's. If you can master Griffith's book first, then it would make your life better when you adventure into Jackson's 3rd.

The book is canonical for a graduate level course on Electrodynamics. Pretty comprehensive, albeit some topics are covered in different places scattered throughout the book. This edition is reasonably well made, considering the price. The binding is sewn, so the probability of pages falling down is low. It's paperback, but I "hardcovered" mine with chipboard and cloth and it feels awesome.

Great condition, heavy content. First year of grad school this is a staple. Wish there was a good companion to this book to go into further details when Jackson “leaves it to the reader” but overall this textbook is rather thorough.

This is just the standard textbook for graduate-level electromagnetism and electrodynamics. Obviously, it's not for the beginner. For an excellent undergraduate-level treatment of the subject, see Griffiths. The Jackson text is one I've wanted to own for a long time. It's in every physics professor's office. I've never seen another text used for graduate-level stuff. It's the standard and with good reason.

Es un libro base para fisica, todos necesitan un Jackson en su biblioteca. Es resistente, con buen tamaño de letras, es muy recomendado este libro

As a postgraduate student, I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is working in electrodynamics. The book is incredibly detailed, offers a good range of problems to properly test the reader's understanding. I will admit that, for people with little background in electrodynamics (myself included, I'm really based in continuum mechanics), it is rather tough work to figure out where Jackson gets some of his results sometimes, but I found that supplementing it with a lower level text (Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics (Pie) or similar) really made a lot of difference, providing me with a tad more background and a reminder of some of the more commonly used mathematical techniques. Of particular use to me was the incredibly instructive appendix on units, along with the section on the Abraham-Lorentz equation, which was part of the focus of my final year honours project at undergraduate.

👍

This is an awesome book for someone who has already gone through a first course on electromagnetism. The third edition is in SI units except for the last part about special relativity. It's a very complete book with lots of hard problems, some say it's a book to keep for the rest of your life. It came in a good package and in perfect conditions

Un excellent ouvrage , une "bible " de référence , mais de niveau très élevé ( BAC+5 ? ) . J'aurais préféré quelque chose de moins pointu , mais je suis content de l'avoir .