A tribute to the publishers of classic atmospheric science books

The last four posts celebrated the publishers of classic physics books.  Today I'd like to pay homage to publishers of classic atmospheric science books.  Several of the major publishers we've already met - Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer, and Wiley - all have major contributions to this literature and appear to remain active in this field.  I will spare readers a laundry list of examples from these publishers.

The main focus of this post is to honor Academic Press, which became an imprint of Harcourt, and now Elsevier.  Wallace & Hobbs' Atmospheric Science:  An Introductory Survey and the 6-volume Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences are signature examples of their portfolio.  However, what "AP" may most be known for is its long-lived International Geophysics Series, which began in 1959 with volume 1, Beno Gutenberg's Physics of the Earth's Interior.  Its most recent volume was published 55 years later, the second edition of Robert Houze's Climate Dynamics, vol. 104 of the series.  The publisher's website lists this as a still-active series, but I do not know of any new volumes since 2014.  Each volume in the series was numbered, and new editions of existing books received their own volume number.

At one time, the series editor was William L. Donn of Columbia University, but later in "my" era (the late 1990s and early 2000s) the editors were Renata Dmowska (Harvard) and James R. Holton (U. Washington), joined later by H. Thomas Rossby (U. Rhode Island).  The series covered all of geophysics, but as the focus today is on atmospheric sciences, let me name a few prominent entries:  Holton's own An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology, Fleagle & Businger's An Introduction to Atmospheric Physics, Salby's Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics (a later edition of which is published by Cambridge University Press), Curry & Webster's Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans, Brown's Fluid Mechanics of the Atmosphere, Cushman-Roisin's Introduction to Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Gill's Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics, Arya's Introduction to Micrometeorology, Marshall & Plumb's Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics, Chamberlain's Theory of Planetary Atmospheres, and Wilks' Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences.  One could go on and on.

In "my" era, the series volumes did not have a uniform "look", unlike the old McGraw-Hill International Series on Pure and Applied Physics, with their green covers with black and gold trim.  Nonetheless, with a 55-year run including many classics, the International Geophysics Series is ubiquitous on atmospheric scientists' bookshelves. 

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: Others

I am winding down my tribute to publishers of classic physics books in this post, though future posts will examine publishers in other subjects.

Springer-Verlag, of course, is a huge publisher in mathematics, engineering, and physics.  I already discussed their Lecture Notes series in an earlier post.  They are also the publishers of Walter Thirring's Course in Mathematical Physics and a series of texts lead-authored by Walter Greiner.  Of particular note was their series Springer Tracts in Natural Philosophy, whose yellow covers resembled some of the Springer math texts.  The series is listed as discontinued on the Springer website.  Other highlights include Florian Scheck's Mechanics, Jack Vanderlinde's Classical Electromagnetic Theory (originally published by Kluwer), and Statistical Physics I:  Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics by Toda, Saito, and Kubo.  They also have legendary reference books like the long-out-of-print Handbuch der Physik, and the AIP Physics Desk Reference.  Springer was founded in 1842 by Julius Springer.

Cambridge University Press is another titan, with classics going back to Brian Pippard's The Elements of Classical Thermodynamics (1957) and Chapman & Cowling's The Mathematical Theory of Non-Uniform Gases (first published in 1939).  Examples of notable texts include Kleppner and Kolenkow's An Introduction to Mechanics, Hand & Finch's Analytical Mechanics, Jose & Saletan's Classical Dynamics:  A Contemporary Approach, Zangwill's Modern Electrodynamics, Born & Wolf's Principles of Optics (originally published by Pergamon), and Ralph Baierlein's Thermal Physics.  They also have the Student's Guide series, exemplified by Daniel Fleisch's A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations.

Oxford University Press is particularly strong in thermal & statistical physics texts, with examples such as Blundell & Blundell's Concepts in Thermal Physics, Bowley & Sanchez's Introductory Statistical Mechanics, and David Chandler's Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics.  They have many others including Hilborn's Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics and a particularly useful series, the Oxford Master Series in Condensed Matter Physics and a counterpart series for Statistical, Computational, and Theoretical Physics.

Cambridge and Oxford University Presses were founded in 1534 and 1586, respectively, laying claim to be the world's oldest and second-oldest university presses.

Finally I will mention a few publishers with relatively smaller footprints, at least in my collection of physics books.

Methuen's Monographs on Physical Subjects included some gems such as J. W. Leech's Mechanics and Derek F. Lawden's An Introduction to Tensor Calculus and Relativity.  Algernon Methuen founded the company in 1892.

W. H. Freeman, founded in 1946, was an imprint of Macmillan.  Its classic physics texts include Charles Kittel's Introduction to Solid State Physics (now published by Wiley), Kittel & Kroemer's Thermal Physics, Lorrain, Corson, & Lorrain's Electromagnetic Fields and Waves, and Taylor & Wheeler's Spacetime Physics.

W. B. Saunders, originally a medical publisher founded in 1888, was known as the publishers of Raymond Serway's introductory physics textbook, as well as classics such as Marion & Thornton's Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, and Ashcroft & Mermin's Solid State Physics.  These are now published by Cengage. Due to a merger with Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Saunders acquired Grant Fowles' Analytical Mechanics, now also published by Cengage.

For many years, Prentice-Hall was the publisher of David J. Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics and Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, now both published by Cambridge University Press, and Douglas C. Giancoli's introductory physics text, now published by Pearson.  Prentice-Hall was founded in 1913 by Charles Gerstenberg and Richard Ettinger, naming the firm after their mothers' maiden names.

Independent publisher W. W. Norton, founded in 1923 by William Warder Norton and his wife Mary Dows Herder Norton, publishes the MIT Introductory Physics Series (principle author, Anthony P. French) as well as Hans Ohanian's introductory physics textbook.  Speaking of MIT, the MIT Press was the original publisher of the English version of Wolfgang Pauli's Lectures on Physics (now reprinted by Dover).

Academic Press (founded in 1941 by Walter J. Johnson and his brother-in-law Kurt Jacoby) is now part of Elsevier, but was the original publisher of the English version of Arnold Sommerfeld's Lectures on Theoretical Physics.  

Princeton University Press (founded in 1905 by Whitney Darrow) publishes Kip Thorne and Roger Blandford's series, Modern Classical Physics, as well as cosmology books by P. J. E. Peebles, Roger Newton's philosophical essay Thinking About Physics, and Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's Gravitation.  They also have the Princeton Series in Physics and Einstein's Collected Papers.  Princeton also has a "Nutshell" series, for instance, Anupam Garg's Classical Electromagnetism in a Nutshell, which at over 700 pages is quite a large nut.

University Science Books is a niche player, with notable books by John R. Taylor, Frank Shu, David McQuarrie, and John Townsend.  Another niche publisher is Infinity Science Press, with titles like Ohanian's Classical Electrodynamics.  The Chicago Lectures in Physics are published by the University of Chicago Press, and includes Robert Geroch's Mathematical Physics.  Johns Hopkins University Presss has a few titles of note such as Don Lemons' Mere Thermodynamics.

World Scientific, a Singapore-based publisher started in 1981 by Phua Kok Khoo and Doreen Liu, has a few notable titles such as Kibble & Berkshire's Classical Mechanics (on behalf of Imperial College Press) and Fritz Rohrlich's Classical Charged Particles.

Finally, all physics readers should be grateful to Dover for keeping some of our favorite classics in print.

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: John Wiley & Sons

Unlike McGraw-Hill and Pearson, discussed in the last posts, who seem to have downsized their footprints in advanced physics books, John Wiley & Sons continues to maintain an active presence to this day.  Also unlike the previously discussed counterparts, Wiley tends not to place their classic physics books in series; each is a standalone volume.  They can be very proud of their portfolio, as illustrated by the all-stars illustrated in the below photo.

A selection of all-star classic physics texts from Wiley.

The Cohen-Tannoudji books are illustrative of the onetime partnership with French publisher Hermann, which also resulted in co-publication of Order within Chaos, by Berge, Pomeau, and Vidal.  We see also that over the years, Wiley acquired Interscience (a US firm founded by Kurt Enoch around the time of WW2) and German publisher VCH (Verlag Chemie), which was founded by the German Chemical Society in 1921.

Historical note.  Wiley traces its history to Charles Wiley, who started a printshop in 1807.  His  son John took over in 1826, who was in turn succeeded by his own sons William H. and Charles in 1876.

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.

A tribute to the publishers of classic physics books: McGraw-Hill

Scientific book publishing is not what it once was.  It is easy now for authors to make PDF versions of their lecture notes and books available on the web at no cost to the user, as alluded to in my post earlier this month.  Other books are available from publishers in electronic form, perhaps accessed by students through university and institutional libraries.  It is possible that the printed scientific book is rapidly becoming a historical artifact.  

This progress seems good and right.  It expands access to these materials by reducing cost, while reaching anyone with access to the Internet.  Perhaps welcome by many is the saving of space on a scientist's bookshelf.  Nonetheless, as a creature of an earlier age, I am a scientific bibliophile.  In their time, scientific books were outrageously successful means of putting knowledge into readers' hands.  I hope to begin a series of occasional blog posts to celebrate the publishers of these artifacts, focusing first on some of the classic textbooks and monographs of physics.

An easy choice for a starting point is McGraw-Hill, whose International Series in Pure and Applied Physics seemed to cover all fields of classical and modern physics.  In their heyday, volumes of this series were recognizable for their green covers with gold trim, embossed on the front with the series title.  The volume's title and author appeared in a black rectangle at the top of their spines.  The series begain in 1929, and some volumes continued to be used well into the 1990s and beyond.  However, I'm not sure whether any new volumes were added after the death of its Consulting Editor, Leonard Schiff, in 1971, nor whether he was replaced.  The first Consulting Editor was F. K. Richtmeyer, who served in the 1930s, followed by Lee A. DuBridge from 1939-1946, and G. P. Harnwell from 1947-1954, followed by Schiff.

One of the series' most prolific authors was John C. Slater of MIT, who contributed around 10 volumes on a range of topics (including classical physics texts co-authored with Nathaniel Frank).  Philip Morse, also of MIT, contributed four volumes (including both volumes of Methods of Theoretical Physics with Herman Feshbach, as well as two books on acoustics, one of which is reprinted by Princeton University Press).  The Morse and Feshbach math methods books were later reprinted by Feshbach's family for a number of years.

The famous text by Feynman & Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, first appeared in the series (and remains available as a Dover reprint), as did Max Jammer's The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, Frederick Seitz's The Modern Theory of Solids, and Microwave Spectroscopy by Nobel laureates Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow.  To select a couple other areas of physics, consider classical mechanics, where the series published Becker's Introduction to Theoretical Mechanics, Barger & Olsson's Classical Mechanics:  A Modern Perspective, and Lindsay's Mechanical Radiation.  In electricity and magnetism, the series featured books authored by Harnwell, Smythe, and Stratton; the latter kept in print by Wiley on behalf of the IEEE.  In the kinetic theory of gases, the monographs by Kennard and Present appeared in the series.  Other notable titles include Michael Tinkham's Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics (still in print with Dover), Francis Bitter's Introduction to Ferromagnetism, Leon Brillouin's Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures (at one time reprinted by Dover, but out of print now), and Schiff's own Quantum Mechanics, which ran through 3 editions.  I'm sure that older readers could name their own favorites too, or at least recognize some famous names in the list of authors and titles.

McGraw-Hill had another series, of undergraduate textbooks, called Fundamentals of Physics, edited by E. U. Condon.  I own two of the upper-division volumes of this series, Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics, by Frederick Reif, and Edgar Kraut's Fundamentals of Mathematical Physics, both still available as reprints from Waveland Press and Dover, respectively.

McGraw-Hill of course was also the publisher of the Berkeley Physics Course, a five-volume series meant to form a 2-year undergraduate physics sequence.  The most successful volume was Edward M. Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism, the only one to appear in a second edition, which remains in print now with Cambridge University Press.  Another classic in this series was Frank Crawford's Waves, which I mentioned in my earlier post.

In 1967 McGraw-Hill acquired Schaum's Outline Series, founded by Daniel Schaum, and continues to publish these books today.  These books (meant to supplement the main text of the course) range over multiple academic disciplines, not just physics.  As far as I know, of the four series discussed here, Schaum's is the only one that McGraw-Hill actively maintains. 

Outside these series of physics books, McGraw-Hill published others of course, like Mark Zemansky's Heat and Thermodynamics, which ran through 7 editions, and Jenkins & White's Fundamentals of Optics, which ran through 4 editions.  They also had another series called the International Series in Pure and Applied Mathematics, of which Dettman's Mathematical Methods in Physics and Engineering is worthy of note (again, still available as a Dover reprint).

Many of McGraw-Hill's physics books have attained classic status, and reprint editions are available for many of them by other publishers, as is evident from the above discussion.  These books have endured beyond their original publisher's interest in them.  While McGraw-Hill remains very active in the introductory physics textbook market, and still publishes some upper division texts, they don't seem to be major players in the latter, nor in the monograph sector of the market.  Thus, this tribute is mainly to past glories, with hope that some of the finest examples remain accessible to physicists of the future.

A family portrait of selected McGraw-Hill volumes in the International Series in Pure and Applied Physics.

Historical note.  McGraw-Hill has its roots in the publishing firms of James H. McGraw, who acquired the American Journal of Railway Appliances in 1888, and John A. Hill, who at the time was an editor of the Locomotive Engineer.  Hill formed his own publisher in 1902, and the two men merged their book operations in 1909.  Upon Hill's death in 1916, the remainder of their publishing companies unified to form the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company in 1917.

The International Year of Sound

In 2015, DTLR celebrated the International Year of Light.  Alas, I was not even aware that 2020 is the International Year of Sound until I received this month's issue of Physics Today.  As a former member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), I wish I had known of this earlier.  In the past I've contributed to research in both physiological acoustics and later ultrasound imaging, but have been away from the field over over a decade.  Nonetheless, I am pleased to recognize the International Year of Sound, if only during its final weeks.

Don't let lecture notes rot

Last week Nature Physics published an op-ed titled "Don't Let Lecture Notes Rot" (vol. 16, p. 1167).  It makes the case for physicists to make their lecture notes available more broadly than for just their own students, particularly in advanced courses where an individualistic perspective can be appreciated by students and even other faculty worldwide.  The op-ed also discusses some of the logistical issues involved in making such notes both available and findable. 

As an example of making lecture notes available, Springer's 50-year old series, Lecture Notes in Physics, long predates the internet, but still seems to be going strong; it is accompanied by their series Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics, which seems to be about 10 years old.  During my graduate research in physics in the late 1990s, there were two particularly useful volumes of LNP that I relied on and cited in my dissertation.  Nowadays, individual professors can simply post their course notes on their personal websites, though they may need encouraging from their colleagues and students, and perhaps university department heads.  

One of the mechanisms discussed for making the most interesting or useful lecture notes findable is for faculty to share annotated reading lists or reference lists.  These often appear in course syllabi, though I agree with the op-ed that some annotation would make these lists even more useful.  I think this principle applies even more broadly.  For instance, I have never taught an upper level physics course, but I can certainly share some books that I found useful as I was studying physics, in the spirit of helping others navigate the landscape of learning materials.  However, bear in mind that my experience dates from the late 1990s, and I am unfamiliar with more recent literature in the field, as well as online offerings such as the MIT OpenCourseware mentioned in the op-ed.

Here I will focus on three standard subjects:  classical mechanics, classical electromagnetic theory, and thermodynamics & statistical physics.  I will also discuss a nonstandard one, fluid dynamics.  Let me start by saying that in retrospect, the textbooks assigned for my undergraduate courses in these topics did not suit me at all.  It wasn't until graduate school that I expanded my reach to a serious study of texts other than those I was assigned, particularly when I was studying for the qualifying exams.  So, the discussion below focuses particularly on books I consulted heavily during those studies.  Of greatest interest are books that have a good balance of theory and solved problems.

For undergraduate classical mechanics, my hands-down favorite must be Marion & Thornton's Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, a book almost ideally suited for preparing for the qualifying exams.  I also occasionally consulted Symon's Mechanics, whose chapter on gravitation includes a vector field theory/PDE formulation of classical gravity not found in Marion & Thornton.  Symon also briefly discusses fluid dynamics and acoustics, topics absent from Marion & Thornton.  At the graduate level, I must confess I am not a fan of Goldstein's Classical Mechanics.  Were I to revisit theoretical mechanics, I would take a look at Fetter & Walecka's Theoretical Mechanics of Particles and Continua, Scheck's Mechanics:  From Newton's Laws to Deterministic Chaos, and a little book by Leech, Classical Mechanics.

For electromagnetic theory, my clear favorite is Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, which in my view is at the pinnacle of undergraduate physics textbooks.  I regret that I did not encounter the book until my first year in graduate school, but it too is ideal preparation for the qualifiers.  Griffiths does not dwell much on electrical circuits though, so I supplemented it with Electromagnetic Fields and Waves, by Lorrain, Corson, & Lorrain.  A backup reference was Nayfeh & Brussel's Electricity and Magnetism.  Finally, as an example of alternate perspectives discussed in the Nature Physics op-ed, Schwartz's Principles of Electrodynamics puts special relativity at the heart of its development of the theory, making Maxwell's equations seem much more natural than the conventional presentations do.  I hope that all physics students get exposed to Schwartz's approach at some point in their learning careers.  Another alternate perspective is presented in Kovetz's Electromagnetic Theory, which includes integrated discussion of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics, topics not often found in undergrad E&M.  A bridge to graduate level books like Jackson's nerve-wracking Classical Electrodynamics could be Heald & Marion's Classical Electromagnetic Radiation.

Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics by Greiner, Neise, and Stocker, part of Greiner's Classical Theoretical Physics series, is a superb qualifying exam study resource for those topics.  When I actually took graduate level statistical physics, I found Statistical Mechanics:  An Advanced Course with Problems and Solutions, by Kubo, Ichimura, Usui, and Hashitsume, a superb backup resource.  There are many other books I would look at were I to revisit thermal/statistical physics, but one worth mentioning is Reichl's A Modern Course in Statistical Physics, which includes coverage of nonequilibrium phenomena.

A physicist should begin the study of fluid dynamics with the two chapters on it in the Feynman Lectures on Physics.  The main text I learned fluid dynamics from was the first edition of Fluid Mechanics by Pijush K. Kundu.  It is an exceptional choice, one that I would highly recommend to others.  This is a field blessed with many fine books.  I found particularly useful the following:

• Aris, Vectors, Tensors, and the Basic Equations of Fluid Mechanics, a major source for Kundu's presentation of the derivation of the Navier-Stokes equations.
  
• Choudhuri, The Physics of Fluids and Plasmas:  An Introduction for Astrophysicists, which makes connections with the kinetic theory of gases, plasma physics, and magnetohydrodynamics.
• Tritton, Physical Fluid Dynamics, very much an experimentalist's perspective.
  

The list of fluid dynamics books I would consult were I to return to the field is too long to outline here.  I will just mention Batchelor's An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics, Falkovich's Fluid Mechanics:  A Short Course for Physicists, Guyon et al.'s Physical Hydrodynamics, Panton's Incompressible Flow, and Yih's Fluid Mechanics:  A Concise Introduction to the Theory.

I will end with a few other miscellaneous books I found useful in my studies:  Optics, by Hecht; Optical Properties of Solids, by Fox; Waves, by Crawford (part of the Berkeley Physics Course); Group Theory in Physics, by Tung; Physical Chemistry, by Atkins; Giant Molecules:  Here, There, and Everywhere..., by Grosberg & Khokhlov; and naturally the Landau & Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics.