This book offers a broad introduction to magnetism and its applications, designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates as well as practising scientists and engineers. The approach is descriptive and quantitative, treating concepts, phenomena, materials and devices in a way that emphasises numerical magnitudes, and provides a wealth of useful data.

Magnetism is a venerable subject, which underwent four revolutionary changes in the course of the twentieth century – understanding of the physics, extension to high frequencies, the avalanche of consumer applications and, most recently, the emergence of spin electronics. The reader probably owns one or two hundred magnets, or some billions if you have a computer where each bit on the hard disc counts as an individually addressable magnet. Sixty years ago, the number would have been at best two or three. Magnetics, in partnership with semiconductors, has created the information revolution, which in turn has given birth to new ways to research the subject – numerical simulation of physical theory, automatic data acquisition and web-based literature searches.

The text is structured in five parts. First, there is a short overview of the field. Then come eight chapters devoted to concepts and principles. Two parts follow which treat experimental methods and materials, respectively. Finally there are four chapters on applications. An elementary knowledge of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics is needed for the second part. Each chapter ends with a short bibliography of secondary literature, and some exercises.