James Clerk Maxwell

It seems that James Clerk Maxwell is not very well-known outside the physics community. I’m not entirely sure why. His accomplishments are extraordinary!

He is mostly remembered for creating the theoretical framework that explains electrodynamics.

“From a long view of the history of mankind—seen from, say, ten thousand years from now—there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.”

Richard Feynman

Maxwell is not the first person to study electricity and magnetism. Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta, Hans Christian Orsted, Michael Faraday, and others might be considered the initial experimenters. However, Maxwell is the first person to grasp how electricity and magnetism work on a deeper level.

Like Euclid, Maxwell does a great job of packaging existing knowledge into a compelling systematic framework. Yet he does so much more!

His mathematical model of electrodynamics captures everything known at the time and predicts new phenomena. It consists of twenty linked differential equations, which tend to be expressed as four partial differential equations today. Maxwell’s equations show that light is an electromagnetic wave that travels at a constant speed.

Here’s a very brief description of some of his other work.

He determined the likely composition and behavior of the rings of Saturn. He created the first color photograph. He used statistics to improve our understanding of thermodynamics. And he inspired many generations of physicists.

His work provides the foundation for pretty much all of the advances in theoretical physics since then.

So, of course, James Clerk Maxwell is one of my heroes!