Principles of Optics: 60th Anniversary Edition 7th Edition

Book Preface

Principles of Optics is one of the most highly cited and most influential physics books ever published, and one of the classic science books of the twentieth century. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of this remarkable book’s first publication, the seventh expanded edition has been reprinted with a special foreword by Sir Peter Knight. The seventh edition was the first thorough revision and expansion of this definitive text. Amongst the material introduced in the seventh edition is a section on CAT scans, a chapter on scattering from inhomogeneous media, including an account of the principles of diffraction tomography, an account of scattering from periodic potentials, and a section on the so-called Rayleigh-Sommerfield diffraction theory. This expansive and timeless book continues to be invaluable to advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in all areas of optics.

Optics in the twenty-first century is a vibrant part of modern physics, with stunning developments in fundamental science (imaging, correlations, and coherence, and so much more), as well as underpinning our technological world, including providing high bit rate optical communications, and precision laser engineering. But, 75 years ago, optics as a major field of research had been regarded by many as a backwater. One of the leaders of my own department at Imperial College London had described it as “all pins and mirrors” and pushed to have it dropped from the undergraduate syllabus. How wrong he was and how fashions have changed: the field was by then poised for explosive development, starting with the realisation, very much pioneered by Emil Wolf, that the study of correlations in light fields unlocked new insights. Understanding partial coherence, the extension to higher-order correlations with the work of Hanbury Brown and Twiss, and then of course the realisation of the laser transformed our views of the optical world. And the magnificent monograph by Max Born and Emil Wolf was at the fore in this revolution. With the publication of B&W, at last we had a magisterial account of the fundamental principles and their application. What an achievement! It has become a major sourcebook used throughout the world.