Who is maxwell physics

Having a keen intellect from childhood, he had one of his geometry papers presented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh during his adolescence. By 16 he'd enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, pursuing a fervent interest in optics and color research. He studied there for three years and eventually attended Cambridge University's Trinity College, graduating in After teaching at Trinity for a time, Maxwell moved on to Marischal College as part of the physics faculty.

He wed Katherine Mary Dewar in While at Marischal, Maxwell pondered a major astronomical question, looking at the case of Saturn and coming up with the idea that the planet's rings are comprised of particles, a theory later confirmed via 20th-century space probes. For this, Maxwell received the Adam Prize. He taught there until when he resigned from his post to do research from his home in Glenlair.

Having continued to do work with Cambridge University as well, Maxwell was instrumental in helping to establish the institution's Cavendish Laboratory, and he took on roles there as lab director and professor of experimental physics at the start of the s. Maxwell had continued his research on color and made groundbreaking discoveries around gas velocity. It was during Maxwell's time at King's College that he began to share revolutionary ideas around electromagnetism and light.

Fellow physicist Michael Faraday had already championed the notion that electricity and magnetics were connected; Maxwell, via experimentation with vortexes, expanded on Faraday's work and came up with the theory of electromagnetic movement being conceptualized in the form of waves, with said energy traveling at light speed.

Supporting his theorems, Maxwell's Equations—speaking to the scholar's aptitude in using math to articulate scientific occurrences—were found in the paper "Dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field," presented to the Royal Society of London in and published the following year. In he published the book A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism , which further expounded on his research.

From there he moved first to King's College, London, and then, in , to become the first Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge where he directed the newly created Cavendish Laboratory. It was at the Cavendish, over the next fifty years, that so much of the physics of today continued to develop from Maxwell's inspiration. Modern technology, in large part, stems from his grasp of the basic principles of the universe.

Wide ranging developments in the field of electricity and electronics, including radio, television, radar and communications, derive from Maxwell's discovery of the laws of the electromagnetic field - which was not a synthesis of what was known before, but rather a fundamental change in concept that departed from Newton's view and was to influence greatly the modern scientific and industrial revolution. CLVI London. XVI London. Edinburgh Vol. Buried in Parton , Castle Douglas, Galloway.

His cousin Jemima Blackburn nee Wedderburn was herself a notable artist, and our knowledge of young James's childhood is enhanced by the delightful watercolours which Jemima painted. His aunt, Jane Cay, was also an accomplished artist and two of her watercolours one depicting Maxwell as a young boy are on display in the Birthplace, as is a pastel portrait of Jane and her sister Frances Maxwell's mother by their mother, Elizabeth Cay. This artistic influence is further demonstrated by the fact that six relatives of Maxwell had portraits painted by the famous Scottish portrait painter, Sir Henry Raeburn These are: Mother's side Frances Hodshon Mrs.

For example, Maxwell envisioned the forces of electricity and magnetism to be carried and communicated by electric and magnetic fields. Maxwell said an electric charge would produce an electric field that surrounded it. Any other charges could sense this field, and based on the strength and direction of the field, it would know how to respond to the force of the original charge. The same went for the magnetic field , and Maxwell took it one step further.

He realized that electric and magnetic fields are two sides of the same coin: Electricity and magnetism weren't two separate, distinct forces, but merely two expressions of the same, unified electromagnetic force. You can't think about electricity without also thinking about magnetism, and vice versa. Maxwell's insights took the form of 20 interconnected equations, which, a few years later, were reduced to four equations of electromagnetism that are still taught to scientists and engineers today.

His revolution followed Isaac Newton 's first unification of physics, in which Earth's gravity was joined with the gravity of the heavens under a single law, and Maxwell's equations became known as the second great unification in physics.

Maxwell's insight was huge — who would have guessed that electricity and magnetism weren't just related, but the same? Modern physics is all about finding single unifying principles to describe vast areas of natural phenomena, and Maxwell took the unification party to the next level.

But Maxwell didn't stop there. He realized that changing electric fields could induce magnetic fields, and vice versa. So he immediately began to wonder if such a setup could be self-reinforcing, wherein a changing electric field would create a changing magnetic field, which could then create a changing electric field and so on.

Maxwell realized that this would be a wave — a wave of electromagnetism. He set about calculating the speed of these electromagnetic waves, using the strengths of the forces of electricity and magnetism, and out popped … the speed of light.

By introducing the concept of the field to the analysis of electricity and magnetism, Maxwell discovered that light — in all its forms, from the infrared, to radio waves, to the colors of the rainbow — was really waves of electromagnetic radiation.

With one set of equations, one brilliant leap of intuition and insight, Maxwell united three great realms of physics: electricity, magnetism and optics. No wonder Einstein admired him.