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I am an undergrad student and i have been through a first easy course on electrodynamics and i have used the book of Griffiths which let me satisfied.But the next two courses I will be taking are notoriously hard mathematics-wise so i want a step-up from Griffiths. I want a mathematically rigorous and comprehensive book that also builds up intuition (because physics is not only maths).

I have looked at Purcell's book and found it very pedagogic, it impressed me but I do not know if it is as difficult as I want.

Do you suggest that I buy Purcell's book or do you have anything else in mind?

Qmechanic
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TheQuantumMan
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1 Answers1

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In my opinion, Purcell is actually a mathematical step down from Griffiths, and certainly covers fewer topics than it. It's great for intuition-building (and every serious physicist should own it), but if rigor is what you're after, it's not the best choice.

Jackson and Landau & Lifshitz are going to be the standard answers here. Another option, and one I find much easier to read (and more interesting) than either of the above texts, is Zangwill's Modern Electrodynamics. It's a relatively new text (2013) that has plenty of mathematical derivations in it, but also a lot of neat examples that show you the power of the techniques.

(That said, Zangwill's chapter on relativity uses $ict$ notation, which I can't even.)

Michael Seifert
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