Textbooks to be used as references for classical electromagnetism

[vanhees71]

You can ask as well: How can a book be called modern when it brings Hamliton's principle and Noether's theorems as the last chapter of a textbook about E&M?

It's not modern at all, precisely for the reason you give. Landau and Lifshitz is much more modern. I often wonder, why usually they don't use the "relativity first" approach. Relativity makes E&M so much simpler, because it's the natural way to fromulate it. One answer is that the curricula of universities often don't follow a modern order of subjects.

I'd also teach non-relativistic quantum mechanics before E&M, because then you have a natural approach to the most usual systems of orthogonal functions, particularly spherical harmonics and all that, which you then can use for the more complicated system of vector fields in E&M.

 

[Dr Transport]

I'd also teach non-relativistic quantum mechanics before E&M, because then you have a natural approach to the most usual systems of orthogonal functions, particularly spherical harmonics and all that, which you then can use for the more complicated system of vector fields in E&M.

That's a good point, I never thought about that.

 

[Orodruin]

I'd also teach non-relativistic quantum mechanics before E&M, because then you have a natural approach to the most usual systems of orthogonal functions, particularly spherical harmonics and all that, which you then can use for the more complicated system of vector fields in E&M.

Well, there is nothing stopping you from reading about systems of orthogonal functions without studying quantum mechanics. They can be pretty useful in many other situations as well. In my program, the general theory of orthogonal functions is taught in a separate course. Examples include vibrating strings, pressure waves, diffusion, etc.

 

[vanhees71]

Sure, but usually you don't introduce operators and algebraic methods in a standard E&M course.

 

[hagopbul]

what about Electromagnetic field theory by Bo Thiede