Shoulders of Giants: The story of electromagnetic theory

A sweeping history of mathematics and electromagnetic theory, told through the lives of the thinkers who unlocked nature’s hidden forces. From the geometry of ancient Greece to the dawn of electromagnetic theory, this is the story of how mathematics revealed the hidden forces of nature that shaped the modern world. Philosophers, engineers, and visionaries appear along the way: Archimedes measuring circles in the sand, Fermat tracing the path of light, Maxwell charting invisible fields, and Heaviside uncovering the conditions that allowed signals to travel faithfully over distances. The narrative follows the chain of ideas carried across centuries — discoveries forgotten, rediscovered, and transformed — until abstract symbols on a page became the blueprint for telegraphs, telephones, and radio. Clear, vivid, and rigorously researched, it is a history not only of equations, but of the rivalries, obsessions, and relentless pursuit of understanding that drove them. This book will appeal to anyone fascinated by mathematics, physics, or the story of science and engineering. Whether you are drawn to the origins of calculus, the rise of electromagnetic theory, or the inventions that carried human voices across continents, it offers both technical insight and human drama in equal measure. Essential reading for those who want to see how the power of mathematical ideas shaped the world of communication, technology, and thought.