role in the development of quantum mechanics. A. C. Aitken called the book "epoch making in a very precise sense", noting that just before the development of the theory of relativity, the book provided a detailed summary of classical dynamics and the progress that had been made in Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics, including work from Henri Poincaré and Tullio Levi-Civita. The book has received many recommendations, including from Victor Lenzen in 1952, nearly 50 years after its initial publication, who said the book was still the "best exposition of the subject on the highest possible level". It was noted in a 2014 article covering the book's development, published in the Archive for History of Exact Sciences, that the book was used for more than just a historical book, where it was pointed out that of the 114 books and papers that cited the book between 2000 and 2012, "only three are of a historical nature". In that same period, the book was said to be "highly recommended to advanced readers" in the 2006 engineering textbook Principles of Engineering Mechanics. A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity In 1910, Whittaker wrote A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, which gave a detailed account of the aether theories from René Descartes to Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein, including the contributions of Hermann Minkowski. The book was well received and established Whittaker as a respected historian of science. A second, revised and extended edition was later released. The first volume, subtitled the classical theories, was published in 1951 and served as a revised and updated edition of the first book. The second volume, published in 1953, extended this work covering the years 1900–1926. Notwithstanding a notorious controversy on Whittaker's views on the history of special relativity, covered in volume two of the second edition, the books are considered authoritative references on the history of classical electromagnetism and are considered classic books in the history of physics. Due to the book's role in the relativity priority dispute, however, the second volume is cited far less than the first volume and first edition, except in connection with the controversy. Relativity priority dispute Whittaker is also remembered for his role in the relativity priority dispute, a historic controversy over credit for the development of special relativity. In a chapter named "The Relativity Theory of Poincaré and Lorentz" in the second volume