Principles of Optics: Electromagnetic Theory of Propagation, Interference and Diffraction of Light (7th Edition) (Hardcover)

by Max Born (Author), Emil Wolf (Author) "THE state of excitation which is established in space by the presence of electric charges is said to constitute an electromagnetic field..." (more)
Key Phrases: perturbation eikonal, primary aberration coefficients, spectroscopic wave number, New York, Cambridge University Press, Opt Soc Amer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
1990 A spectacular book. -- Joseph D Fargnole Westinghouse Scool of Applied and Eng Science

One of the most advanced and comprehensive optics text availabe...To know all it contains is to know nearly all of optics. -- Professor H Phillip Stahl Physics & Applied Optics Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"Principles of Optics is a great, rigorous, ponderous, unwavering mathematical tract that deals with a welath of topics...a great book, the seventh edition is a fine one, and as I said, if you work in the field you probably should own it." Physics Today

"Principles of Optics is a great book, the seventh edition is a fine one, and if you work in the field you probably ought to own it." Physics Today

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 986 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 7th edition (October 13, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521642221
• ISBN-13: 978-0521642224
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #70,764 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good professional reference book, but not for students., December 31, 2001

By	GPK (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

Already for many years, this is a classic on optics. Almost any subject you can think of is covered in this book, in a fundamental way. That is its strength and its weakness: experienced scientists will find everything they need, but for students it is not a good book because it is far too detailed: they will get lost in all the mathematical details before they grasp the essence of the subject.

This problem also exists - to a lesser extent - for professionals who try to use the book to fill in a gap in their knowledge: they too will find themselves asking why they have to read so many (well thought-through) pages before the authors finally make their point.

My advice: use other books to study from, and use this book when you are already experienced and need a high-quality reference work.

A note for scienctists: please mention section numbers when referring to this book in your own publications.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Classic, December 12, 2002

By	Yvan Dutil (Québec) - See all my reviews

This book is a classic with all problems associated. Half of the reference quoted have been written before the WWII. Very useful if you like to quote original papers. This book cover most topics of the classical optics but hardy cover modern topics.

However, it is hard to read and use a weird notation. Certainly not useful for rapid referencing. Like the bible, use it only when you have serious problem to deal with.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It has everything about classical wave optics!, September 21, 2000

By	Jinwon Sung (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This seventh edition of the famous classic standard book on optics is really neat! The notations, symbols became a little more modern than the previous editions. Also the shapes of the characters in the equations looks much more pretty so it helps reading, understanding. As most of you know, this has everything you need to study about, refer to classical wave optics. The only weak point of this book is the material covering geometrical optics. It's too abstract, mathematical and lacks modern treatment of optical designs, aberrations. But, regarding the wave optics, it's hard to find any flaws, downsides. Even though I am working on micro-photonic elements, I often need to refer to this book for some wave optics principles, knowledges. But this book alone does not cover the whole optics including optical design, photonics. If you want to have the best minimum combination of books covering the basics of the entire optics. I would recommend "Fundamentals of Photonics(Saleh)", "Modern Optical Engineering(Smith)" and this book.