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James Clerk Maxwell

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   James Clerk Maxwell
   Born 13 June 1831
        Edinburgh
   Died 5 November 1879
        Cambridge

   James Clerk Maxwell ( 13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish
   mathematical physicist, born in Edinburgh. Maxwell formulated a set of
   equations — eponymically named Maxwell's equations — expressing the
   basic laws of electricity and magnetism and developed the Maxwell
   distribution in the kinetic theory of gases. He was the last
   representative of a younger branch of the well-known Scottish family of
   Clerk of Penicuik. He is also credited with developing the first
   permanent colour photograph in 1861.

   Maxwell had one of the finest mathematical minds of any theoretical
   physicist of his time. Maxwell is widely regarded as the nineteenth
   century scientist who had the greatest influence on twentieth century
   physics, making contributions to the fundamental models of nature. In
   1931, on the centennial anniversary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein
   described Maxwell's work as the "most profound and the most fruitful
   that physics has experienced since the time of Newton."

   Algebraic mathematics with elements of geometry are a feature of much
   of Maxwell's work. Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic
   forces are two complementary aspects of electromagnetism. He showed
   that electric and magnetic fields travel through space, in the form of
   waves, at a constant velocity of 3.0 × 10^8 m/s. He also proposed that
   light was a form of electromagnetic radiation.

Biography

Early life and education

   Maxwell was born at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the
   only child of Edinburgh lawyer John Clerk. By the age of three, Maxwell
   had developed an innate sense of inquisitiveness about the world.
   Everything that moved, shone, or made a noise drew the question:

   Maxwell's early education was provided by his Christian mother and
   included studying the Bible. Most of his early childhood was spent at
   the family estate Glenlair near Dumfries. Maxwell's mother died when he
   was just eight years old. Maxwell then went to Edinburgh Academy in his
   youth. His school nickname was " Daftie", earned when he arrived for
   his first day of school wearing home-made shoes. In 1845, at the age of
   14, Maxwell wrote a paper describing mechanical means of drawing
   mathematical curves with a piece of twine.

Middle years

   A young Maxwell at university.
   Enlarge
   A young Maxwell at university.

   In 1847, Maxwell attended the University of Edinburgh studying natural
   philosophy, moral philosophy, and mental philosophy. At Edinburgh, he
   studied under Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet. In his eighteenth
   year, while still a student in Edinburgh, he contributed two papers to
   the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — one of which, On
   the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids, laid the foundation of one of the
   most singular discoveries 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 a
   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 (scoring second-highest in the mathematics
   exam) and was declared equal with the senior wrangler of his year in
   the higher ordeal of the Smith's prize examination. For more than half
   of his relatively short life he held a prominent position in the
   foremost rank of scientists, usually as a college professor.
   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.

   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. For example,
   Maxwell's discs, seen in the photograph above, were used to compare a
   variable mixture of three primary colours with a sample colour by
   observating 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 the two colleges there 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. 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 was 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 statistically formulated, 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 previous laws of thermodynamics, explaining
   the observations and experiments in a better way. Maxwell's work on
   thermodynamics led him to devise the thought experiment that came to be
   known as Maxwell's demon.

Electromagnetism

   A postcard from Maxwell to Peter Tait.
   Enlarge
   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 of both
   the electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with
   matter.

   Furthermore, Maxwell showed that the equations predict 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. Maxwell (1865) wrote:

          This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have
          strong reason to conclude that light itself (including radiant
          heat, and other radiations if any) is an electromagnetic
          disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the
          electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws.

   Maxwell 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 Einstein to formulate the theory of special relativity, and in
   the process Einstein abandoned the requirement of a luminiferous
   aether.

Later years and afterwards

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

   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 also was the first to explicitly use dimensional
   analysis, also in 1871.
   James and Katherine Maxwell, 1869.
   Enlarge
   James and Katherine Maxwell, 1869.

   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.

   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.

Poetry and song

   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 :

          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.

Homage

     * 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 meterology.
     * 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.
     * The £4 million James Clerk Maxwell Centre of the Edinburgh Academy,
       opened in 2006 to mark his 175th anniversary.
     * James Clerk Maxwell Road in Cambridge, which runs along one side of
       the Cavendish Laboratory.

Publications

     * Maxwell, James Clerk, "On the Description of Oval Curves, and those
       having a plurality of Foci". Proceedings of the Royal Society of
       Edinburgh, Vol. ii. 1846.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " Illustrations of the Dynamical Theory of
       Gases". 1860.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " On Physical Lines of Force". 1861.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic
       Field". 1865.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " On Governors".From the Proceedings of the
       Royal Society, No.100. 1868.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " Theory of Heat". 1871.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism".
       Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1873.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " Molecules". Nature, September, 1873.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " Matter and Motion", 1876.
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, "On the Results of Bernoulli's Theory of
       Gases as Applied to their Internal Friction, their Diffusion, and
       their Conductivity for Heat".
     * Maxwell, James Clerk, " Ether", Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth
       Edition (1875-89).

Honours

   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 University of Salford's main building has also
   been named after him.

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