James Clerk Maxwell

None at all. He was just a math and science nerd working in a dusty laboratory

in England 150 years ago. Most of the things he invented were nothing but

math formulas and equations. In fact, his four most famous equations weren't

even his ... all four of them were invented by other guys long before Maxwell,

and all he did was to collect up these four equations out of books he read in

the library and play with them all together, like a set of blocks or dolls.

And out of that, he got this weird idea that there must be electromagnetic waves.

And that light could be one kind of them. And if it was, then it would have to move

at 186,000 miles a second. This was so much faster than horses and trains that

almost everybody thought he was a little bit crazy. But the ones that didn't

started doing experiments to find electromagnetic waves.

One guy in Germany figured out how to make them, and after a lot of work,

he could actually make electromagnetic waves on one side of the room and

detect them all the way across the room. That was such a huge accomplishment

that scientists all around the world named the waves after him, and started

calling them "Hertzian waves". But so many other scientists started working

with the same waves that after a few years, they just called them "radio waves".

At the same time, other scientists were figuring out ways to measure the speed

of light, and the better their measurements got, the closer they came to the speed

that Maxwell predicted, and they became more and more convinced that light had to

be electromagnetic waves too.

By now you can see that Maxwell's work had nothing to do with modern society,

except for radio, TV, microwave radios and microwave ovens, weather radar,

GPS, ham radio, CB radio, wi-fi, cellular telephones, garage door openers, traffic

and weather together every 10 minutes, the news from across the country and

around the world while you sit in your easy chair, a stock trader in Chicago

making moves on the New York Stock Exchange in 1/2 a second, chest x-rays,

CAT scans, MRI scans, PET scans, radio astronomy, the leftover fingerprints of

the Big Bang, astronauts talking to Houston from the surface of the Moon, and

Mars rovers receiving their travel instructions from JPL and sending pictures back.

Maxwell discovered that it should be possible, so Hertz tried it and figured out

how to generate radio and send it all the way across his laboratory.

If you can imagine a world that had never known radio, you can see how

plausible it is that nobody would have ever tried it until somebody convinced

them that it must exist. And that it was important to look for it, because heat

and light are all the same phenomenon as radio.

That was Maxwell.

He died because everyone though he was a total idiot and very unhygienic so they got him beheaded!

Your loss James the I, your loss!

Edinbergh University

James Clerk-Maxwell only developed the theoretical basis for radio waves. David Hughes first sent radio waves through the air in 1879, but his results were unclear -- ie, what Hughes saw was not unambiguously the EM waves predicted by Maxwell. Heinrich Hertz, in 1886, did more exacting experiments and showed that EM waves were exactly as Maxwell predicted.

work in office performing as keeping records

An articling clerk is an alternative name for an articled clerk, an apprentice in law.

James Maxwell died on November 5th, 1879, of stomach cancer in Cambridge MA at 48 years of age.

He added an extra mathematical term to Ampere's law and discovered that with what are now called Maxwell's equations there is a free-space solutions in the form of waves.

He found that the wave solutions travel at the speed of light, so he guessed that they were light. This was later proved to be correct. The equations also predicted the existence of radio waves and these were discovered 15 years later.

Yes, more or less. James Clerk Maxwell predicted that an electromagnetic wave would propagate at the speed of light. Therefore, he also suspected that light was an electromagnetic wave. This was confirmed later.

Yes, more or less. James Clerk Maxwell predicted that an electromagnetic wave would propagate at the speed of light. Therefore, he also suspected that light was an electromagnetic wave. This was confirmed later.

Yes, more or less. James Clerk Maxwell predicted that an electromagnetic wave would propagate at the speed of light. Therefore, he also suspected that light was an electromagnetic wave. This was confirmed later.

Yes, more or less. James Clerk Maxwell predicted that an electromagnetic wave would propagate at the speed of light. Therefore, he also suspected that light was an electromagnetic wave. This was confirmed later.

yes. he had a dog and a cat.

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

James Clerk Maxwell's work laid the foundation for modern electromagnetic theory, encapsulated in his famous equations that describe how electric and magnetic fields interact. This has led to the development of numerous technologies, including wireless communication, radar, and even the principles behind modern electronics. Additionally, Maxwell's contributions to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics have influenced fields such as chemistry and materials science, enabling advancements in various industries. His work continues to be integral to our understanding of physics and engineering today.