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Shoulders of Giants

The story of electromagnetic theory

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About the Book

From the geometry of ancient Greece to the dawn of electromagnetic theory, this is the story of how mathematics revealed the hidden forces of nature that shaped the modern world. Philosophers, engineers, and visionaries appear along the way: Archimedes measuring circles in the sand, Fermat tracing the path of light, Maxwell charting invisible fields, and Heaviside uncovering the conditions that allowed signals to travel faithfully over distances.

This book follows the chain of ideas carried across centuries — discoveries forgotten, rediscovered, and transformed — until abstract symbols on a page became the blueprint for telegraphs, telephones, and radio. Clear, vivid, and rigorously researched, it is a history not only of equations, but of the human struggles behind them: rivalries, obsessions, and the relentless pursuit of understanding.

About the Author

Jared Flatow is an engineer and researcher fascinated by the power of mathematics to illuminate both the natural world and the workings of the mind. He sees in the history of mathematics not only a record of discovery, but a mirror of human thought itself.

Jared currently leads engineering at Halliday. He is a blockchain & machine learning pioneer, distributed & realtime systems designer, and holds a degree in electrical & computer engineering from Rice University.

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Available worldwide in paperback. Audiobook coming soon.

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