ABSTRACT
Searches for magnetic charge continue at the present time, emphasizing that electromagnetism is very far from being a closed subject. Although from time to time there have been spectacular reports of the discovery of magnetic charge, these “discoveries” were never replicated, and serious objections were raised in each instance. Nevertheless, there are strong theoretical reasons to believe that magnetic charge exists in nature, and may have played an important role in the development of the universe. It is said that Peregrinus in 1269 observed that magnets (lodestones) always have two poles, which he called north and south. This was elevated to a “hypothesis” by Ampere in the early 19th Century. The first theoretical calculation of the motion of a charged particle in the presence of a single magnetic pole was performed by Poincare in 1896 to explain recent observations.
