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James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell
Library of Congress

[b. Edinburgh, Scotland, June 13, 1831, d. Cambridge, England, November 5, 1879]

Much of Maxwell's early work was based on interaction of moving particles. In 1857 he showed that Saturn's rings must consist of small particles. Three years later he determined the statistical distribution of moving molecules in gases, explaining diffusion and conduction of heat (this theory was independently derived by Ludwig Boltzmann). Maxwell also studied color, being the first to show that the primary colors of light are red, green, and blue and demonstrating the first color photograph based on this idea. From 1856 through 1873 Maxwell developed the laws of electromagnetism, beginning with Michael Faraday's concept of a field of lines of force. Maxwell's calculations showed that electromagnetic waves in a vacuum travel at the same speed as light; he correctly concluded that light is a form of electromagnetic wave, boldly predicting the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum.


 
 
Biography: James Clerk Maxwell

The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) formulated important mathematical expressions describing electric and magnetic phenomena and postulated the identity of light as an electromagnetic action.

James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh on June 13, 1831. His father, who was a lawyer, was first named John Clerk but adopted the surname of Maxwell upon his succession to an estate, Glenlair, situated near Dalbeattie. James was a quiet child "much given to reading, drawing pictures, chiefly of animals, and constructing geometric models." A favorite pastime was reflecting the sun about his room with a highly polished tinplate, an activity which seemed to presage his adult preoccupation with optical phenomena.

Education and Early Researches

James's strange mode of dress helped earn him the nickname "Dafty" at Edinburgh Academy, where he was enrolled in 1841. His father, aware of his son's scholarly aptitude, began taking James to meetings of the Edinburgh Society of Arts and of the Royal Society. Through his school studies James had become interested in a problem in applied mathematics, the construction of a perfect oval. At the age of 15 he communicated a paper to the Edinburgh Royal Society, "On the Description of Oval Curves and Those Having a Plurality of Foci." He remained at Edinburgh Academy until 1847.

Optical studies occupied much of Maxwell's time in 1847. At Glenlair he experimented with Newton's rings, a chromatic effect produced by pressing lenses together, and studied the color variations of soap bubbles. In the spring of that year his uncle took him to see a demonstration of a "polarizing prism," and he engaged in observing the effects of polarized light by means of specimens of Iceland spar. A paper read to the Edinburgh Royal Society in 1850, "On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids," was the outcome of these studies. There Maxwell described strains set up in elastic substances such as gelatin and compared his experimental results which had been optically obtained with his newly derived theory of such equilibrium. This work was written in Maxwell's third, and last, year at the University of Edinburgh; he had enrolled in 1847.

In 1850 Maxwell went to Cambridge University as an undergraduate. He enrolled at Peterhouse but in December moved to Trinity College. In due course he became a scholar of the college and a member of the select Essay Club, familiarly known as the "apostles" since its membership was limited to 12. He took the bachelor's degree in 1854. Following graduation Maxwell was elected a fellow of Trinity College and joined its staff of lecturers, with responsibility for the subjects of hydrostatics and optics. He also carried out optical investigations with tops which were proportionally colored and rapidly revolved to determine the true mixture of colors.

Aberdeen and King's College Professorships

Maxwell left Cambridge in 1856 to accept an appointment as professor of natural philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen. There he met Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter of the principal of the college. They were married in 1858. During the years of his Aberdeen professorship Maxwell continued his study of the theory of colors. However, a problem regarding the stability of the rings of Saturn also occupied much of his attention.

The French mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace had shown that if Saturn's ring were a solid it could not be stable. Maxwell decided to study a hypothetical mathematical model of the planet in which the ring was "loaded" at one or more points. In this manner he found a solution which accounted for the motion of the ring on Newtonian laws of physics but which predicted that the loads would be visible as satellites. Eventually, however, he discovered an alternative solution which entailed a fluid ring or one constructed of a colloidal arrangement of separate small solid particles. For this work Maxwell received the Adam Prize offered by St. John's College in 1857, in honor of the discovery of Neptune by John Couch Adams.

The following year Maxwell's professorship was dissolved when Marischal College was amalgamated with King's College to form the University of Aberdeen. He obtained, however, the professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy in King's College, London. There his formal responsibilities to the college were quite demanding, involving regular evening classes for working men and artisans in addition to 9 months of lecturing for the regular students. Nevertheless he continued his scientific researches.

At the British Association meeting in Oxford in 1860, Maxwell exhibited a device for mixing colors of the spectrum. He also presented an important paper on Daniel Bernoulli's theory of gases. The theory depicted gas as consisting of a number of independent particles moving without mutual interference except upon collision. Maxwell demonstrated mathematically that the apparent viscosity of gases, their low heat conductivity, and the known laws of gas diffusion could be satisfactorily explained by this theory.

Maxwell resigned his professorship at King's College in 1865 and retired to Glenlair, where he produced some of his most important scientific writing. He presented his dynamic theory of gases to the Royal Society of London in 1866. His treatise on heat appeared in 1870, and the great work on electricity and magnetism was published in 1873.

Organization of the Cavendish Laboratory

In 1870 the Duke of Devonshire, who was chancellor of Cambridge, indicated his desire to build and outfit a physical laboratory for the university. In accepting the offer, university officials established a chair of experimental physics for the laboratory directorship. Maxwell became the first director of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1871.

Two important investigations undertaken at the Cavendish Laboratory when it opened in 1874, and supervised personally by Maxwell, concerned the accurate measurement of electrical resistance. The first was the testing of Ohm's law, a mathematical statement of the linear proportionality between electrical potential and the product of electrical resistance and current. Prior to the Cavendish researches there was no evidence that the law was more than a good approximation of the behavior of nature, nor was there any theoretical reason why the law should hold accurately over extended ranges of current or potential. The Cavendish investigations demonstrated the adequacy of Ohm's statement to within 1 part in 200,000 over large variations of these variables. Paralleling this work was an investigation of electrical standards and the determination of the ohm in absolute units of measure.

Influence on American Physics

In the early 1870s Maxwell not only played an important role in the scientific renaissance at Cambridge, but he was also instrumental in encouraging the development of high-level experimental physics in America. Original researchers who could understand the sophisticated mathematical formalism of European physicists such as Maxwell were rare at that time in the United States. The most eminent American scientific publication, American Journal of Science, was largely devoted to geological, botanical, and zoological topics; its editors simply did not understand exact science and its methods.

This was the situation faced by Henry Augustus Rowland, a young civil engineer from Rensselaer Institute, when he attempted to publish some magnetic researches. The American Journal editors repeatedly rejected Rowland's papers, forcing him in desperation to write directly to Maxwell. Maxwell received Rowland's work "with great interest" and saw to its immediate publication in the English Philosophical Magazine.

When Daniel Coit Gilman set out to find a faculty for a newly endowed university in Baltimore in 1875, he heard of Maxwell's interest in Rowland's work. For Gilman this endorsement was worth more than a "whole stack of recommendations." Thus Rowland became the first chairman of the physics department at Johns Hopkins University and until his death in 1901 led the way in establishing high-quality experimental physics in America.

Other Researches

Maxwell's work in optics, kinetic theory of gases, and electromagnetism forms some of his most important contributions to science. His paper "On the Theory of Compound Colours" of 1860 summarized numerous experiments with the colored tops mentioned above. By means of another device of his own invention, the "Colour-box," he investigated the effect of mixing given proportions of light taken from the spectrum. He showed that any given color sensation may be produced by combinations in due proportion of rays taken from three parts of the spectrum; that is, from three so-called primary colors. These experiments also tended to confirm the hypothesis that color blindness was due to the viewer's insensitivity to one of the three primary colors. For this work Maxwell received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society of London.

The concept of discrete particles in his solution of the Saturn's rings problem may have led Maxwell to the study of gases; his first papers on this subject appeared in 1860. He pointed out that the velocities of different molecules of a gas, even if equal to start with, would become different in consequence of collisions with their neighbors. He therefore employed a statistical method of treating the problem in which the total number of molecules was divided into a series of groups. The velocities of all of the molecules constituting a group were the same within narrow limits. By taking the average velocity of each group into account, he was able to determine an important relationship between this velocity and the number of molecules in the group. He published papers on gas theory almost continuously until his death.

However, Maxwell is best remembered for his work on electricity and magnetism, which began with the important study of 1856 on lines of force as conceived by the English physicist Michael Faraday. Maxwell took Faraday's view that electrical and magnetic effects did not arise from attractions at a distance of electric or magnetic matter. Rather these effects were the means by which changes of some unknown description in an "ether" which filled all space became known to the experimenter.

Maxwell studied attractions of magnetic lines of force by means of a model based on the vortices or whirlpools of a fluid or mobile medium. This model was used as a mechanical illustration "to assist the imagination, but not to account for the phenomena." The centrifugal force of the vortices was accompanied by a tension directed parallel to the lines of force issuing from a magnetic pole. He found great difficulty, however, in conceiving of vortices revolving side by side in the same direction about parallel axes. The difficulty lay in understanding how contiguous portions of consecutive vortices could move in opposite directions.

Maxwell's well-known solution was to imagine that a layer of "particles, acting as idle wheels" was interposed between each vortex and its neighbor. Contiguous sides of the vortices then acted on the idle wheels to produce a direction of rotation opposite to that of the vortices themselves. The remarkable feature of this model discovered by Maxwell was that the action of the "idle wheels" could be used to analyze electric currents. His discovery yielded a mathematical relationship between electricity and magnetism.

Maxwell also studied dynamical changes in the lines of force and introduced the concept of energy storage and distribution in the ether. These ideas were developed in a great paper, "On a Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," read to the Royal Society of London in 1864. He portrayed electromagnetic action as traveling through space at a definite rate in waves which were transverse to the direction of propagation. The paper was expanded into his classic Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873), in which he postulated the identity of light as an electromagnetic phenomenon. The test of this theory in various experimental forms occupied the time of a large number of physicists throughout the world for the remainder of the century.

During the last years of his life Maxwell devoted much time to editing the Electrical Researches of Henry Cavendish (1879). He also wrote a textbook on heat and a small treatise on dynamics called "Matter and Motion." Among his other papers are some on geometric optics and several, published mostly in the Transactions of the Royal Edinburgh Society, on reciprocal figures and diagrams of force.

Maxwell died at Cambridge on Nov. 5, 1879. A memorial edition of his scientific papers was organized and published by the Cambridge University Press in 1890. Several lines from one of his essays written at Cambridge in 1856 serve as a fitting memorial to this great electrical theorist: "They know the laws by heart, and do the calculations by fingers…. When will they begin to think? Then comes active life: What do they do that by? Precedent, wheeltracks, and finger-posts."

Further Reading

An authoritative and well-documented biography of Maxwell is Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882; rev. ed. 1884); the authors, who were personally acquainted with Maxwell, made use of a family diary as well as numerous papers and correspondence collected from members of the British scientific community. A highly readable account is R. T. Glazebrook, James Clerk Maxwell and Modern Physics (1901). Other studies are in J. G. Crowther, British Scientists of the Nineteenth Century (1935) and Men of Science (1936). A recent study is David K. C. MacDonald, Faraday, Maxwell and Kelvin (1964). C. Domb, ed., Clerk Maxwell and Modern Science: Six Commemorative Lectures by Sir Edward V. Appleton and Others (1964), provides extensive discussion of Maxwell's work by a number of highly competent British scientists.

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: James Clerk Maxwell

(born June 13, 1831, Edinburgh, Scot. — died Nov. 5, 1879, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) Scottish physicist. He published his first scientific paper at age 14, entered the University of Edinburgh at 16, and graduated from Cambridge University. He taught at Aberdeen University, King's College London, and Cambridge (from 1871), where he supervised the building of Cavendish Laboratory. His most revolutionary achievement was his demonstration that light is an electromagnetic wave, and he originated the concept of electromagnetic radiation. His field equations (see Maxwell's equations) paved the way for Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. He established the nature of Saturn's rings, did important work on colour perception, and produced the kinetic theory of gases. His ideas formed the basis for quantum mechanics and ultimately for the modern theory of the structure of atoms and molecules.

For more information on James Clerk Maxwell, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: James Clerk Maxwell

Maxwell, James Clerk (1831-79). Maxwell was a mathematical physicist particularly eminent for his work on electromagnetism, and on the theory of gases. After holding chairs in Aberdeen and in London, he was in 1871 appointed to the professorship at Cambridge founded in memory of Henry Cavendish. He oversaw the building of the Cavendish Laboratory, where J. J. Thomson and Lord Rutherford were to work.

 
Photography Encyclopedia: James Clerk Maxwell

Maxwell, James Clerk (1831-79), Scottish physicist of genius whose greatest contribution to physics was his electromagnetic model for the nature of light, expressed in four monumental equations based on the findings of Michael Faraday. Another outstanding achievement was the placing of the kinetic theory of gases on a sound mathematical basis. He extended the work of Young and Helmholtz on colour vision and, based on the theory of primary colours, produced the first colour photograph in 1861, making separation negatives through red, green, and blue filters and projecting the images in register through similar filters. Although the experiment was flawed (the ‘red’ record was actually ultraviolet, his plates being insensitive to red), it led to the development of genuine three-colour additive and subtractive colour photography.

— Graham Saxby

Bibliography

  • Harman, P. M., The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell (1908)
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Maxwell, James Clerk
(klärk) , 1831–79, great Scottish physicist. After a brilliant career at Edinburgh and Cambridge, where he won early recognition with mathematical papers, he was professor at Marischal College, Aberdeen (1856–60), and at King's College, London (1860–65). In 1871 he was appointed first professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, where he directed the organization of the Cavendish Laboratory. He is known especially for his work in electricity and magnetism, summarized in A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873). Basing his own study and research on that of Faraday, he developed the theory of the electromagnetic field on a mathematical basis and made possible a much greater understanding of the phenomena in this field. He was led to the conclusion that electric and magnetic energy travel in transverse waves that propagate at a speed equal to that of light; light is thus only one type of electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell's electromagnetic theory occupies a position in classical physics comparable to Newton's work on mechanics. One of his early papers, “On the Stability of Motion of Saturn's Rings” (1859), was especially important and foreshadowed his later investigations of heat and the kinetic theory of gases. He is also known for his studies of color (which led to his invention of the color disk named for him), and color blindness. In addition to his papers in these fields, he wrote a classic elementary text in dynamics, Matter and Motion (1876).
 
Science Dictionary: James Clerk Maxwell

A Scottish physicist of the nineteenth century. Maxwell organized the modern study of electricity and magnetism when he wrote down Maxwell's equations.

 
Quotes By: James Clerk Maxwell

Quotes:

"The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter."

 
Wikipedia: James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell
James_Clerk_Maxwell.png
James Clerk Maxwell
Born June 13 1831(1831--)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died November 5 1879 (aged 48)
Cambridge, England
Nationality Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
Field Mathematics, Physics
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Known for Maxwell's Equations, The Maxwell Distribution, Maxwell's Demon
Notable prizes Rumford Medal
Adams Prize

James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 18315 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist from Edinburgh, Scotland. His most significant achievement was aggregating a set of equations in electricity, magnetism and inductance — eponymously named Maxwell's equations — including an important modification of Ampère's Circuital Law. It was the most unified model of electromagnetism yet. It is famous for introducing to the physics community a detailed model of light as an electromagnetic phenomena, building upon the earlier hypothesis advanced by Faraday (Faraday Effect).

He also developed the Maxwell distribution, a statistical means to describe aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. These two discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for future work in such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. He is also known for creating the first true colour photograph in 1861.


[The work of Maxwell] ... the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.

Albert Einstein, The Sunday Post[1]

Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space, in the form of waves, and at the constant speed of light. Finally, in 1861 Maxwell wrote a four-part publication in the Philosophical Magazine called On Physical Lines of Force where he first proposed that light was in fact undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

Maxwell is considered by many physicists to be the scientist of the nineteenth century most influential on twentieth century physics. His contributions to physics are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.[2]

Biography

Early life and education

James Clerk Maxwell was born on 13 June 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland, to John Clerk and Frances Maxwell (née Cay). His birthplace, at 14 India Street, is now the location of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences. It was at this time that physicist Michael Faraday was in the process of completing his work on electromagnetic induction, a concept upon which Maxwell would later build.

Maxwell grew up on his father's estate in the Scottish countryside. He was encouraged by his father to pursue his scientific and mathematical interests. Maxwell entered college at the age of 16 and eventually graduated with high honours in mathematics. All indications suggest that Maxwell had maintained an unquenchable curiosity from an early age. By the age of three, everything that moved, shone, or made a noise drew the question: "what's the go o' that?".[3] In a letter to her sister Jane Cay in 1834, his mother describes this innate sense of inquisitiveness:

He is a very happy man, and has improved much since the weather got moderate; he has great work with doors, locks, keys, etc., and 'show me how it doos' is never out of his mouth. He also investigates the hidden course of streams and bell-wires, the way the water gets from the pond through the wall...[2]

Recognizing the potential of young Maxwell, his mother Frances took responsibility for his early education, which in Victorian times was largely the job of the women of the house. She became ill — probably with cancer — and died in 1839. His father, John Clerk Maxwell, undertook the education of his son, with the aid of his sister-in-law Jane Cay, both of whom played pivotal roles in the life of James. His formal education began, unsuccessfully, under the guidance of a hired tutor. Not much is known about the man James's father hired to instruct his son, except that he treated the younger Maxwell harshly. His educational philosophy was founded upon coercion, often physical. James never responded well to the tutor's instruction; he chided his student for being slow and wayward. After considerable searching, John Maxwell sent James to the Edinburgh Academy. His school nickname was "Daftie", earned when he arrived for his first day of school wearing home-made shoes.

Maxwell was captivated by geometry at an early age, rediscovering the regular polyhedra before any formal instruction. Much of his talent went unnoticed however, and his academic work remained unremarkable until, in 1845 at the age of 13, he won the school's mathematical medal, and first prizes for English and for English verse. For his first piece of original work, at the age of 14, Maxwell wrote a paper describing mechanical means of drawing mathematical curves with a piece of twine and properties of ellipses and curves with more than two foci. This work, Oval Curves, was published in an issue of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and although it shows the curiosity of Maxwell at a young age, it is important to note that the work itself was not mathematically profound. Unlike other great minds, such as Gauss, Pascal or Mozart, Maxwell was not a child prodigy. Rather, his genius would mature slowly.

Middle years

A young Maxwell at university. He is holding the colour wheel which he invented.
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A young Maxwell at university. He is holding the colour wheel which he invented.

Maxwell left the Academy and began attending class at the University of Edinburgh. Having the opportunity to attend Cambridge after his first term, Maxwell decided instead to complete the full three terms of his undergraduate studies at Edinburgh. The main reason for this was that Cambridge was too far from home, and he would only have the opportunity to see his father twice a year. Another reason was Maxwell's concern for his future. He wanted to become a scientist, but jobs in science were rare at this time, and it would have been much more difficult to obtain a lecturing post at a university as prestigious as Cambridge. Accordingly, Maxwell completed his studies at Edinburgh in natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and mental philosophy under Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet. In his eighteenth year he contributed two papers for the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — one of which, On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids, laid the foundation for an important discovery of his later life: the temporary double refraction produced in viscous liquids by shear stress.

In 1850, Maxwell left for Cambridge University and initially attended Peterhouse, but eventually left for Trinity College where he believed it was easier to obtain a fellowship. At Trinity, he was elected to the secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles. In November 1851, Maxwell studied under the tutor William Hopkins (nicknamed the "wrangler maker"). A considerable part of the translation of his electromagnetism equations was accomplished during Maxwell's career as an undergraduate in Trinity.

In 1854, Maxwell graduated with a degree as second wrangler in mathematics from Trinity (i.e. scoring second-highest in the final mathematics examination) and was declared equal with the senior wrangler of his year in the more exacting ordeal of the Smith's prize examination. Immediately after taking his degree, he read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society a novel memoir, On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending. This is one of the few purely mathematical papers he published, and it exhibited at once to experts the full genius of its author. About the same time, his elaborate memoir, On Faraday's Lines of Force appeared, in which he gave the first indication of some of the electrical investigations which culminated in the greatest work of his life.

The first permanent colour photograph, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.
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The first permanent colour photograph, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.

From 1855 to 1872, he published at intervals a series of valuable investigations connected with the Perception of Colour and Colour-Blindness, for the earlier of which he received the Rumford medal from the Royal Society in 1860. The instruments which he devised for these investigations were simple and convenient in use. For example, Maxwell's discs were used to compare a variable mixture of three primary colours with a sample colour by observing the spinning "colour top." In 1856, Maxwell was appointed to the chair of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen, which he held until the fusion of Aberdeen's two colleges in 1860.

In 1859, he won the Adams prize in Cambridge for an original essay, On the Stability of Saturn's Rings, in which he concluded the rings could not be completely solid or fluid. Maxwell demonstrated stability could ensue only if the rings consisted of numerous small solid particles, which he called "brickbats". He also mathematically disproved the nebular hypothesis (which stated that the solar system formed through the progressive condensation of a purely gaseous nebula), forcing the theory to account for additional portions of small solid particles.

In 1860 he became a professor at King's College London. In 1861, Maxwell was elected to the Royal Society. He researched elastic solids and pure geometry during this time.

Kinetic theory

One of Maxwell's greatest investigations was on the kinetic theory of gases. Originating with Daniel Bernoulli, this theory was advanced by the successive labours of John Herapath, John James Waterston, James Joule, and particularly Rudolf Clausius, to such an extent as to put its general accuracy beyond a doubt; but it received enormous development from Maxwell, who in this field appeared as an experimenter (on the laws of gaseous friction) as well as a mathematician.

In 1865, Maxwell moved to the estate he inherited from his father in Glenlair, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. In 1868, he resigned his Chair of Physics and Astronomy at King's College, London.

In 1866, he formulated statistically, independently of Ludwig Boltzmann, the Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases. His formula, called the Maxwell distribution, gives the fraction of gas molecules moving at a specified velocity at any given temperature. In the kinetic theory, temperatures and heat involve only molecular movement. This approach generalized the previously established laws of thermodynamics and explained existing observations and experiments in a better way than had been achieved previously. Maxwell's work on thermodynamics led him to devise the thought experiment that came to be known as Maxwell's demon.

Electromagnetism

Main article: Maxwell's Equations
A postcard from Maxwell to Peter Tait.
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A postcard from Maxwell to Peter Tait.

The greatest work of Maxwell's life was devoted to electricity. Maxwell's most important contribution was the extension and mathematical formulation of earlier work on electricity and magnetism by Michael Faraday, André-Marie Ampère, and others into a linked set of differential equations (originally, 20 equations in 20 variables, later re-expressed in quaternion- and vector-based notations). These equations, which are now collectively known as Maxwell's equations (or occasionally, "Maxwell's Wonderful Equations"), were first presented to the Royal Society in 1864, and together describe the behaviour and relation between electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with matter.

Maxwell showed that the equations predict the existence of waves of oscillating electric and magnetic fields that travel through empty space at a speed that could be predicted from simple electrical experiments; using the data available at the time, Maxwell obtained a velocity of 310,740,000 m/s. In his 1864 paper A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, Maxwell wrote,

The agreement of the results seems to show that light and magnetism are affections of the same substance, and that light is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field according to electromagnetic laws.

Maxwell was proved correct, and his quantitative connection between light and electromagnetism is considered one of the great triumphs of 19th century physics.

At that time, Maxwell believed that the propagation of light required a medium for the waves, dubbed the luminiferous aether. Over time, the existence of such a medium, permeating all space and yet apparently undetectable by mechanical means, proved more and more difficult to reconcile with experiments such as the Michelson-Morley experiment. Moreover, it seemed to require an absolute frame of reference in which the equations were valid, with the distasteful result that the equations changed form for a moving observer. These difficulties inspired Albert Einstein to formulate the theory of special relativity, and in the process Einstein dispensed with the requirement of a luminiferous aether.

Control theory


Maxwell published a famous paper "On governors" in the Proceedings of Royal Society, vol. 16 (1867-1868). This paper is quite frequently considered a classical paper in the early days of control theory.

Later years

James and Katherine Maxwell, 1869.
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James and Katherine Maxwell, 1869.

Maxwell also made contributions to the area of optics and colour vision, being credited with the discovery that colour photographs could be formed using red, green, and blue filters. He had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon three times, each time with a different colour filter over the lens. The three images were developed and then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the same colour filter used to take its image. When brought into focus, the three images formed a full colour image. The three photographic plates now reside in a small museum at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the house where Maxwell was born.

Maxwell's work on colour blindness won him the Rumford Medal by the Royal Society of London. He wrote an admirable textbook of the Theory of Heat (1871), and an excellent elementary treatise on Matter and Motion (1876). Maxwell was also the first to make explicit use of dimensional analysis, also in 1871.

In 1871, he was the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge. Maxwell was put in charge of the development of the Cavendish Laboratory. He supervised every step of the progress of the building and of the purchase of the very valuable collection of apparatus paid for by its generous founder, the 7th Duke of Devonshire (chancellor of the university, and one of its most distinguished alumni). One of Maxwell's last great contributions to science was the editing (with copious original notes) of the electrical researches of Henry Cavendish, from which it appeared that Cavendish researched such questions as the mean density of the earth and the composition of water, among other things.

Maxwell married Katherine Mary Dewar when he was 27 years of age, but they had no children. He died in Cambridge of abdominal cancer at the age of 48. He had been a devout Christian his entire life. Maxwell is buried at Parton Kirk, near Castle Douglas in Galloway, Scotland.

The extended biography The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, by his former schoolfellow and lifelong friend Professor Lewis Campbell, was published in 1882 and his collected works, including the series of articles on the properties of matter, such as Atom, Attraction, Capillary Action, Diffusion, Ether, etc., were issued in two volumes by the Cambridge University Press in 1890.

Personality

From the start of his childhood, religion touched all aspects of Maxwell's life. Both his father and mother were devout churchgoers (Presbyterian and Episcopalian) and instilled a strong faith in their son. All information available suggests that neither in his adolescence, nor in his later years, did Maxwell ever reject the fundamental principles of his Christian faith.[citation needed] Ivan Tolstoy, author of one of Maxwell's biographies, remarked at the frequency with which scientists writing short biographies on Maxwell often omit the subject of his religion.

As a great lover of British poetry, Maxwell memorized poems and wrote his own. The best known is Rigid Body Sings closely based on Comin' Through the Rye by Robert Burns, which he apparently used to sing while accompanying himself on a guitar. It has the immortal opening lines[1]:

Gin a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air.
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?

A collection of his poems was published by his friend Lewis Campbell in 1882.

Legacy

Maxwell was ranked #24 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history and #91 on the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

  • The maxwell (Mx), a compound derived CGS unit measuring magnetic flux (commonly abbreviated as f).
  • Maxwell Montes, a mountain range on Venus, one of only three features on the planet that are not given female names.
  • The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the largest sub-mm astronomical telescope in the world, with a diameter of 15 metres.
  • The 1977 James Clerk Maxwell building of the University of Edinburgh, housing the schools of mathematics, physics, computer science and meteorology.
  • The James Clerk Maxwell building at the Waterloo campus of King's College London, in commemoration of him being Professor of Natural Philosophy at King's from 1860 to 1865. The university also has a chair in Physics named after him, and a society for undergraduate physicists.
  • Maxwell House was selected in 1968 as the name for Dorm B at the newly-opened Crown College at the University of California at Santa Cruz. It was the most-desired name of those offered to the eight houses.
  • The £4 million James Clerk Maxwell Centre of the Edinburgh Academy was opened in 2006 to mark his 175th anniversary.
  • James Clerk Maxwell Road in Cambridge, which runs along one side of the Cavendish Laboratory.
  • The University of Salford's main building has also been named after him.
  • James Clerk Maxwell was featured in the 1995 SNES game Tales of Phantasia as a summon that can aid the party in battle. His ability consisted of electromagnetic spheres that attacked the enemy.
  • Also featured in the 2004 GameCube game Tales of Symphonia as the especial and most powerful of all summons of the game, being called the king of summons. Had the ability to shoot meteors and could only be gotten after getting every other summon spirit.
  • The software company Next Limit sells a software package called Maxwell Render which renders 3d geometry using the full unbiased spectral properties of natural light.

Publications

See also

References

  1. ^ McFall, Patrick "Brainy young James wasn't so daft after all" in The Sunday Post, April 23 2006
  2. ^ a b Tolstoy, Ivan (1981). James Clerk Maxwell: A Biography. Edinburgh: Cannongate, 12. ISBN 086241010X. 
  3. ^ Mahon, Basil (2003). The Man Who Changed Everything – the Life of James Clerk Maxwell. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN 0-470-86171-1. 

External links

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James Clerk Maxwell Foundation

Maxwell's 175th Anniversary

Song lyrics and poetry

Maxwell - Christian/Creationist interpretation

Photos

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Mathematics

Treatise On Electricity And Magnetism - 1873 Edition

Versions of Maxwell's 1873 treatise readable online

Supplementary material for understanding Maxwell's 1873 treatise


Persondata
NAME Maxwell, James Clerk
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION mathematical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 13 June 1831(1831--)
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh
DATE OF DEATH 5 November 1879
PLACE OF DEATH Cambridge

 
 

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Scientist. History of Science and Technology, edited by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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