physics

This text has the perfect mix of mathematics and amusement. Covering a very broad spectrum, Hecht gives brief historical introductions to the topics, includes the math needed for reasonable mastery of the subject, and often offers the reader a homemade experiment to demonstrate the concepts. The figures are good, as are the problems at the end of each chapter. As an optical engineer, I find myself referring to the section on Fresnel reflection often, but some of the later chapters on Fourier optics and coherence theory make fascinating and not overwhelming night reading. I recommend this text highly to undergraduate instructors and optical engineers, but perhaps the highest compliment I can give this book is that I frequently recommend it to technical people who rarely dabble in optics, but who need a readable reference on the widest variety of optics topics.

Yes if you only buy one book to learn the fundamentals of optics this is the book you should buy or even borrow. My department adopted it a long time ago and Hecht is a very good writter. The format is great. The book does ask the reader to at least be familure with the concepts of Electromagnetism. According to my professor, the sections concerning Matrix Methods with respect to Len Systems and Jone's Matrices have some notation that is confusing. For a cleaner matrix notation we use Fundamentals of Photonics. The chapters on Geometrical Optics are excellent.

The 4th Edition is a lot more visually appealing than the 3rd edition. But in terms of new material it's not much different. The book has so many diagrams and pictures that it really helps supplement the actual text a lot.

I really reccomend this book for anyone looking for a solid foundation in classical optics.

it is difficult to learn from. NO examples are found and I often found myself reading a section several times and still not feeling confident that I understood it.