Book

This book describes the planetary model of the atom developed by Wilhelm Weber (1804-1891). It is based on Weber\'s electrodynamic force of 1846 which is a generalization of Coulomb\'s law, with the force depending also upon the relative radial velocity between the charges and upon the relative radial acceleration between them. He began to conceive his planetary model of the atom by considering the nature of Amp?re\'s stable molecular currents. According to Weber\'s force, two charges of the same sign behave with a negative effective inertial mass when they are very close to one another, so that they should attract one another instead of repelling one another. He could then propose in the 1870\'s and 1880\'s a planetary model of the atom with a nucleus composed of positive charges held together by his electrodynamic force law, so that it was not necessary to postulate nuclear forces to stabilize the nucleus. He proposed negative charges orbiting around this positive nucleus. All of this was accomplished before the discovery of the electron and before the atomic models of Rutherford and Bohr. There are many quotations of original works and a large bibliography is included in the text.