Magnetism is a class of physical phenomena that includes forces exerted by magne ts on other magnets.

It has its origin in electric currents and the fundamental magnetic moments of elementary particles. These give rise to a magnetic field th at acts on other currents and moments. All materials are influenced to some exte nt by a magnetic field. The strongest effect is on permanent magnets, which have persistent magnetic moments caused by ferromagnetism. Most materials do not hav e permanent moments. Some are attracted to a magnetic field (paramagnetism); oth ers are repulsed by a magnetic field (diamagnetism); others have a much more com plex relationship with an applied magnetic field (spin glass behavior and antife rromagnetism). Substances that are negligibly affected by magnetic fields are kn own as non-magnetic substances. They include copper, aluminium, gases, and plast ic. Pure oxygen exhibits magnetic properties when cooled to a liquid state. The magnetic state (or phase) of a material depends on temperature (and other va riables such as pressure and the applied magnetic field) so that a material may exhibit more than one form of magnetism depending on its temperature, etc. Aristotle attributed the first of what could be called a scientific discussion o n magnetism to Thales of Miletus, who lived from about 625 BC to about 545 BC.[1 ] Around the same time, in ancient India, the Indian surgeon, Sushruta, was the first to make use of the magnet for surgical purposes.[2] In ancient China, the earliest literary reference to magnetism lies in a 4th-cen tury BC book named after its author, The Master of Demon Valley (???): "The lode stone makes iron come or it attracts it."[3] The earliest mention of the attract ion of a needle appears in a work composed between AD 20 and 100 (Louen-heng): " A lodestone attracts a needle."[4] The Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031 1095) was the first person to write of the magnetic needle compass and that it improved th e accuracy of navigation by employing the astronomical concept of true north (Dr eam Pool Essays, AD 1088), and by the 12th century the Chinese were known to use the lodestone compass for navigation. They sculpted a directional spoon from lo destone in such a way that the handle of the spoon always pointed south. Alexander Neckam, by 1187, was the first in Europe to describe the compass and i ts use for navigation. In 1269, Peter Peregrinus de Maricourt wrote the Epistola de magnete, the first extant treatise describing the properties of magnets. In 1282, the properties of magnets and the dry compass were discussed by Al-Ashraf, a Yemeni physicist, astronomer, and geographer.[5] In 1600, William Gilbert published his De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Ma gnet the Earth). In this work he describes many of his experiments with his mode l earth called the terrella. From his experiments, he concluded that the Earth w as itself magnetic and that this was the reason compasses pointed north (previou sly, some believed that it was the pole star (Polaris) or a large magnetic islan d on the north pole that attracted the compass). An understanding of the relationship between electricity and magnetism began in 1819 with work by Hans Christian Oersted, a professor at the University of Copen hagen, who discovered more or less by accident that an electric current could in fluence a compass needle. This landmark experiment is known as Oersted's Experim ent. Several other experiments followed, with Andr-Marie Ampre, who in 1820 discov ered that the magnetic field circulating in a closed-path was related to the cur rent flowing through the perimeter of the path; Carl Friedrich Gauss; Jean-Bapti ste Biot and Flix Savart, both of which in 1820 came up with the Biot-Savart Law giving an equation for the magnetic field from a current-carrying wire; Michael Faraday, who in 1831 found that a time-varying magnetic flux through a loop of w ire induced a voltage, and others finding further links between magnetism and el ectricity. James Clerk Maxwell synthesized and expanded these insights into Maxw ell's equations, unifying electricity, magnetism, and optics into the field of e lectromagnetism. In 1905, Einstein used these laws in motivating his theory of s pecial relativity,[6] requiring that the laws held true in all inertial referenc e frames. Electromagnetism has continued to develop into the 21st century, being incorpora ted into the more fundamental theories of gauge theory, quantum electrodynamics, electroweak theory, and finally the standard model.