created, $=dv.current().file.ctime & modified, =this.modified
tags: Science
The Man Who Changed Everything - Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon
One scientific epoch ended and another began with James Clerk Maxwell - Albert Einstein
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 19th century will be judged by Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics - Richard Feynmann
In 1861 James Clerk Maxwell had a scientific idea that was as profound as any work of philosophy, as beautiful as any painting, and more powerful than any act of politics or war. Nothing would be the same again.
In the middle of the 19th century, the world’s best physicists were searching for a key to the great mystery of electricity and magnetism. Maxwell made the prediction that fleeting electric currents could exist not only in conductors but in all materials, and even in empty space. His theory predicted that every time a magnet jiggled, or electric current changed, a wave of energy would spread out into space like a ripple on a pond. He calculated the speed of the waves was the speed at which light had been measured.
Maxwell’s theory is now an established law of nature, one of the central pillars of our understanding of the universe. It opened the way to relativity and quantum theory, and survived both those revolutions intact. Max Planck said the theory must be numbered among the greatest of all intellectual achievements. But the result is so closely woven into the fabric of our daily lives that most of us take it wholly for granted, its author unacknowledged.
Maxwell’s Demon - a molecular sized creature who could make heat flow from a cold gas to a hot one - was one of the first effective thought experiments, a technique Einstein would later make his own.
Maxwell was born in 1831 and lived for 48 years.
As a boy he seemed dull in class and acquired the nickname “Dafty”. Born n Edinburgh but brought up at Glenlair in Galloway south-west Scotland.
At 26 he wrote a telegraph poem teasing his friend who was a consultant to the Atlantic Telegraph company when its cable-laying ran into difficulties.
Under the sea, under the sea, No little signals are coming to me. Under the sea, under the sea, Something surely has gone wrong, And it’s broke, broke, broke; What is the cause of it does not transpire But something has broken the telegraph wire With stroke, stroke stroke, Or else they’ve been pulling to strong.
In his 30s a long standing acquaintance with the sister of a friend blossomed into romance and she agreed to marry him. Frances Cay was a spirited and resolute woman who supplied the get-u-and-go he has so far lacked. They resolved to change their day-dreams to purposeful activity on setting up a home in Glenlair.
Frances died at 47 due to abdominal cancer. James went to Academy, but a year late.
Two things held him back in class - numbing effect of repetitive exercises of Green and Latin. Also the hesitancy of his speech, the words coming in spates between long pauses. He eventually managed to overcome to worst of this problem by projecting a mental image of the master’s anticipated questions on the classroom’s windows, so he could simply read them out when needed.
One of the things Maxwell learned from his reading was the fallibility of men’s efforts to understand the world. All of the great scientists had made mistakes. He was acutely aware of his own tendency to make errors in calculation.
His death:
As he had been in health, so was he in sickness and in the face of death. The calmness of his mind was never once disturbed. His sufferings were acute for some days after his return to Cambridge, and, even after their mitigation, were still of a kind to try severely any ordinary patience and fortitude. But they were never spoken of by him in a complaining tone. In the midst of them his thoughts and consideration were rather for others than for himself. Neither did the approach of death disturb his habitual composure … A few days before his death he asked me how much longer he could last. This inquiry was made with the most perfect calmness. He wished to live until the expected arrival from Edinburgh of his friend and relative Mr Colin Mackenzie. His only anxiety seemed to be about his wife, whose health had for a few years been delicate and had recently become worse … His intellect also remained clear and apparently unimpaired to the last. While his bodily strength was ebbing away to death, his mind never wandered or wavered, but remained clear to the very end. No man ever met death more consciously or more calmly.
James Clerk Maxwell (1831 - 1879) Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell’s equation, is described as the second great unification in physics, where the first was realized by Isaac Newton.
He studied the nature of Saturn’s rings, and how they could remain stable without breaking up, drifting away or crashing into Saturn. A regular solid ring could not be stable, he concluded, but the rings must be composed of numerous small particles he called “brick-bats” each independently orbiting Saturn. Voyager flybys in the 80s confirmed this, but it is now understood the particles are no stable, being pulled into Saturn and expected to vanish entirely in the next 300 million years.
His wife was Katherine Clerk Maxell. She aided him on some experiments like his work on color vision and experiments on the viscosity of gases.
James and Katherine performed this experiment in their home in London. Their neighbours reportedly thought that they were “mad to spend so many hours staring into a coffin.” Katherine’s observations differed from James’s on several accounts. James noted there were measurable differences in the color perceived by each observer.
Maxwell wrote:
He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday’s work, lest he fall into despair, not to-morrow’s, lest he become a visionary not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work, nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his action. Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life, and an embodiment of the work of eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises, because the present is given him for a possession.