A second, extended and revised, edition consisting of two volumes was released in the early 1950s by Thomas Nelson, expanding the book's scope to include the first quarter of the 20th century.

[7][8][1] Though overall reviews of the book were generally positive, due to its role in this relativity priority dispute, it receives far fewer citations than the other volumes, outside of references to the controversy.

[10] His second major release, Analytical Dynamics, a mathematical physics textbook, was published in 1906 and was, according to Victor Lenzen in 1952, "still the best exposition of the subject on the highest possible level.

[4] The original version of the book was universally praised and was considered an authoritative reference work in the history of physics, despite its difficulty to obtain past the 1920s.

[5][6][12] The first edition of the book, written in 1910, gives a detailed account of the aether theories and their development from René Descartes to Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein, including the contributions of Hermann Minkowski.

The book consists of twelve chapters that begin with a discussion on the theories of aether in the 17th century, focusing heavily on René Descartes, and end with a discussion of electronics and the theories of aether at the close of the 19th century, extensively covering contributions from Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and J. J. Thomson.

Beginning with Descartes' conjectures, the chapter focuses on contributions from Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton[13] while it highlights the work of Petrus Peregrinus, William Gilbert, Pierre de Fermat, Robert Hooke, Galileo, and Ole Rømer.

[13] The chapter includes a discussion of the contributions made by Franz Neumann, Wilhelm Eduard Weber, Bernhard Riemann, James Prescott Joule, Hermann von Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin, Gustav Kirchhoff, and Jean Peltier.

Contributions by Lord Kelvin, Carl Anton Bjerknes, James MacCullagh, Bernhard Riemann, George Francis FitzGerald, and William Mitchinson Hicks.

[16] Sparrow wrote that the book lives up to the legacy left by Whittaker's A Course in Modern Analysis and A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies.

"[17] A third 1911 review of the book praised it for its careful depiction of the developments, asserting "the treatment of the more important advances, without being [exhaustive], is sufficiently adequate to define them clearly in their historical setting".

[4] The two volumes provide an account of the historical development of the fundamental theories of physics and they are said to "contain the distilled essence of their author's reading and study over a period of more than half a century.

[23] Chapter nine, on models of the aether, discusses, among others, contributions of Maxwell, William Thomson, James MacCullagh, Riemann, George Francis FitzGerald, and Hermann von Helmholtz, the preeminent physicists of the nineteenth century.

[21] In a second 1951 review, William McCrea stated that Whittaker had succeeded, "possibly more than any other historian of science", in imparting "a comprehensive and authentic impression of that wherein the great pioneers were truly great", which allowing the reader to "see their work, with its lack of precedence, against the background of strangely assorted experimental data and of contemporary conflicting general physical concepts" and "to see how they yet contributed each his share to what we are bound to recognize as permanent progress".

"[28] Miller noted that while it is primarily a history book, it is also "philosophy, physics, and mathematics of the first temper" and that it gives an "elegant penetrating examination of The Classical Theories".

[10] In a third 1952 review, John Synge noted that the book is "backed by a vast erudition", but is not overpowering and that "the style is sprightly and the author is singularly successful in putting himself and the reader in the place of each physicist".

[24] Synge goes on to say that Whittaker, with great skill, was able to "mingle the atmosphere of contemporary confusion which always accompanies scientific progress with an appreciation of what is actually going on, as viewed in light of later knowledge.

"[29] Edwin Kemble, in a fifth 1952 review, stated that the book was "in a class by itself" and summarized it as a "high-level account" of the steps in the development of the classical theory of electromagnetism that it is "well documented and extraordinarily comprehensive.

[31] Arthur Tyndall, in his 1951 review, stated the book is "rich in experimental fact", with comparatively fewer mathematical sections, with notable exceptions such as those on Lorentz and Maxwell, saying that "this new volume is not a heavy treatise in theoretical physics, as perhaps its name might suggest".

[33] Chapter three covers early developments in old quantum theory, discussing Max Planck's contributions to physics and touching on Einstein and Arnold Sommerfeld.

[33] He also singles out chapter five, on gravitation, as being "perfect" due to Whittaker's own scholarship in the field, going on to say it is "the most readable and elucidating short presentation of general relativity and cosmology".

"[35] In the opening remarks of his 30 November 1954 address to the Royal Society, president Edgar Adrian states that Whittaker is perhaps the most well-known British mathematician of the time, due to his "numerous, varied, and important contributions" and the offices which he had held, but that of all his works, this History is probably the most important, while he notes that Whittaker's books on analytical dynamics and modern analysis have been widely influential both in the UK and internationally.

[33] Born also points out that the book goes beyond what ordinary textbooks can do, which he believes offer students "the shortest and simplest way to knowledge and understanding",[33] and "are in cases not only unhistorical but a distortion of history".

"[63] In his explicit rebuttal of 1960, Holton notes that Einstein's paper "was indeed one of a number of contributions by many different authors",[45] but goes on to point out that Whittaker's assessment was lacking and plainly wrong at places.

[45] Holton goes on to note the "equally significant fact" that Lorentz's paper was "not on the special relativity as we understand the term since Einstein", as his "fundamental assumptions are not relativistic".

[1] Torretti notes that their theory, in stark contrast to Einstein's, relies on the assumption of an aether which interacted with systems moving across it, affecting the clocks shrinking bodies.

[66] Torretti notes that Poincare's failure to catch on was his notorious conventionalism, and the fact that he may have been a little too proud to admit that "he had lost the glory of founding 20th-century physics to a young Swiss patent clerk.

"[67] Charles Scribner, in his 1984 article Henri Poincaré and the Principle of Relativity, stated his belief that Whittaker's view on the matter "fails to do justice to the available historical evidence" and notes that it may also "create obstacles for students".

"[48] He notes several of the points later raised by Holton in his 1960 rebuttal, including discrepancy in powers of v/c and that Poincare never truly accepted the theory in the manner Einstein had put forward.

[4] Hunt closes by noting that the book is, in many ways, a "relic of a past age", but remains "very useful" when "approached critically" and praises Whittaker as "one of the last and most thoughtful of the great Victorian mathematical physicists."