A Collection of Memoirs on Physics

Abstract

LA Société Française de Physique in the volumes before us have initiated a movement which cannot fail to be of the greatest service to students of physics. They are publishing collections of memoirs on one subject written by several authors, instead of following the more usual plan of collecting the papers of one author on a variety of subjects. There can, we think, be no question as to which plan is of most service to the student. The collected papers of one author must from the nature of the case be chiefly used as a work of reference, while the study of a collection of the most important memoirs ought to form an essential part of the reading of every advanced student of the subject. Now that the memoirs in which the foundations of the sciences of electrostatic or electromagnetism, and of investigations with the pendulum, are by the enterprise of the French Society so readily accessible, it is to be hoped that there will be a much greater development of the systematic study of the original memoirs than we are afraid prevails at present.

Collection de Mémoires relatifs à la Physique.

Publiés par La Société Française de Physique, tome 1–5. (Paris, Gauthier-Villars.)