A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: Addison-Wesley

Continuing the theme from the last post, I'd like to continue my tribute to the publishers of classic physics books by turning to Addison-Wesley, which is now an imprint of Pearson.  Back in its heydey, the publisher had both the Addison-Wesley Series in Physics and Series in Advanced Physics.  As the original US distributor of the English translations of the Landau & Lifschitz Course of Theoretical Physics published by Pergamon, and the original publisher of the Feynman Lectures on Physics, Addison-Wesley was another of the pre-eminent publishers of classic physics books.

Like the McGraw-Hill International Series in Pure and Applied Physics, the older Addison-Wesley books had a distinct "look":  plain front & back covers, with spines indicating the title and author of the book within a colored band.  The color schemes of these books varied more than for their McGraw-Hill counterparts.  Examples of classics include Herbert Goldstein's Classical Mechanics, which ran through 3 editions; Keith Symon's Mechanics, which also ran through 3 editions; Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory, by Reitz, Milford, and Christy, running through 4 editions; Eugene Hecht's Optics (now in its 5th edition); Daniel Schroeder's An Introduction to Thermal Physics (now published by Oxford University Press); Peskin & Schroeder's An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (now published by Taylor & Francis's CRC Press); and J. J. Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics (whose latest edition is published by Cambridge University Press) and Advanced Quantum Mechanics.

Addison-Wesley's Advanced Book Program also had a series called Lecture Notes and Supplements in Physics, edited by John David Jackson and David Pines, which included Gordon Baym's Lectures on Quantum Mechanics and Bethe & Jackiw's Intermediate Quantum Mechanics.  These two are now published by Taylor & Francis' CRC Press.  Addison-Wesley was also a prolific publisher of math texts, which can also be found on the bookshelves of some of us older physicists.

Today, A-W's successor Pearson still publishes some of these classics, like the Feynman Lectures, Hecht's Optics, and Goldstein's Classical Mechanics.  However, as is evident from the above discussion, many of their other gems are now kept in print by other publishers.  For instance, Elsevier now publishes the English translations of the Landau & Lifschitz course, and Dover publishes the second edition of Jerrold Franklin's Classical Electromagnetism.  

A selection of physics books from Addison-Wesley.  The five on the left show the "classic" cover style of the older ones.

Historical note.  Addison-Wesley was founded in 1942 by Melbourne Wesley Cummings and Lew Addison Cummings, naming the company after their middle names.