The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell

In the 19th century, science in general and physics in particular grew up, assuming their modern form which is still recognisable today. At the start of the century, the word “scientist” was not yet in use, and the natural philosophers of the time were often amateurs. University research in the sciences, particularly in Britain, was rare. Those working in the sciences were often occupied by cataloguing natural phenomena, and apart from Newton's monumental achievements, few people focussed on discovering mathematical laws to explain the new physical phenomena which were being discovered such as electricity and magnetism.One person, James Clerk Maxwell, was largely responsible for creating the way modern science is done and the way we think about theories of physics, while simultaneously restoring Britain's standing in physics compared to work on the Continent, and he created an institution which would continue to do important work from the time of his early death until the present day. While every physicist and electrical engineer knows of Maxwell and his work, he is largely unknown to the general public, and even those who are aware of his seminal work in electromagnetism may be unaware of the extent his footprints are found all over the edifice of 19th century physics.Maxwell was born in 1831 to a Scottish lawyer, John Clerk, and his wife Frances Cay. Clerk subsequently inherited a country estate, and added “Maxwell” to his name in honour of the noble relatives from whom he inherited it. His son's first name, then was “James” and his surname “Clerk Maxwell”: this is why his full name is always used instead of “James Maxwell”. From childhood, James was curious about everything he encountered, and instead of asking “Why?” over and over like many children, he drove his parents to distraction with “What's the go o' that?”. His father did not consider science a suitable occupation for his son and tried to direct him toward the law, but James's curiosity did not extend to legal tomes and he concentrated on topics that interested him. He published his first scientific paper, on curves with more than two foci, at the age of 14. He pursued his scientific education first at the University of Edinburgh and later at Cambridge, where he graduated in 1854 with a degree in mathematics. He came in second in the prestigious Tripos examination, earning the title of Second Wrangler.Maxwell was now free to begin his independent research, and he turned to the problem of human colour vision. It had been established that colour vision worked by detecting the mixture of three primary colours, but Maxwell was the first to discover that these primaries were red, green, and blue, and that by mixing them in the correct proportion, white would be produced. This was a matter to which Maxwell would return repeatedly during his life.In 1856 he accepted an appointment as a full professor and department head at Marischal College, in Aberdeen Scotland. In 1857, the topic for the prestigious Adams Prize was the nature of the rings of Saturn. Maxwell's submission was a tour de force which proved that the rings could not be either solid nor a liquid, and hence had to be made of an enormous number of individually orbiting bodies. Maxwell was awarded the prize, the significance of which was magnified by the fact that his was the only submission: all of the others who aspired to solve the problem had abandoned it as too difficult.Maxwell's next post was at King's College London, where he investigated the properties of gases and strengthened the evidence for the molecular theory of gases. It was here that he first undertook to explain the relationship between electricity and magnetism which had been discovered by Michael Faraday. Working in the old style of physics, he constructed an intricate mechanical thought experiment model which might explain the lines of force that Faraday had introduced but which many scientists thought were mystical mumbo-jumbo. Maxwell believed the alternative of action at a distance without any intermediate mechanism was wrong, and was able, with his model, to explain the phenomenon of rotation of the plane of polarisation of light by a magnetic field, which had been discovered by Faraday. While at King's College, to demonstrate his theory of colour vision, he took and displayed the first colour photograph.Maxwell's greatest scientific achievement was done while living the life of a country gentleman at his estate, Glenair. In his textbook, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, he presented his famous equations which showed that electricity and magnetism were two aspects of the same phenomenon. This was the first of the great unifications of physical laws which have continued to the present day. But that isn't all they showed. The speed of light appeared as a conversion factor between the units of electricity and magnetism, and the equations allowed solutions of waves oscillating between an electric and magnetic field which could propagate through empty space at the speed of light. It was compelling to deduce that light was just such an electromagnetic wave, and that waves of other frequencies outside the visual range must exist. Thus was laid the foundation of wireless communication, X-rays, and gamma rays. The speed of light is a constant in Maxwell's equations, not depending upon the motion of the observer. This appears to conflict with Newton's laws of mechanics, and it was not until Einstein's 1905 paper on special relativity that the mystery would be resolved. In essence, faced with a dispute between Newton and Maxwell, Einstein decided to bet on Maxwell, and he chose wisely. Finally, when you look at Maxwell's equations (in their modern form, using the notation of vector calculus), they appear lopsided. While they unify electricity and magnetism, the symmetry is imperfect in that while a moving electric charge generates a magnetic field, there is no magnetic charge which, when moved, generates an electric field. Such a charge would be a magnetic monopole, and despite extensive experimental searches, none has ever been found. The existence of monopoles would make Maxwell's equations even more beautiful, but sometimes nature doesn't care about that. By all evidence to date, Maxwell got it right.In 1871 Maxwell came out of retirement to accept a professorship at Cambridge and found the Cavendish Laboratory, which would focus on experimental science and elevate Cambridge to world-class status in the field. To date, 29 Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work done at the Cavendish.Maxwell's theoretical and experimental work on heat and gases revealed discrepancies which were not explained until the development of quantum theory in the 20th century. His suggestion of Maxwell's demon posed a deep puzzle in the foundations of thermodynamics which eventually, a century later, showed the deep connections between information theory and statistical mechanics. His practical work on automatic governors for steam engines foreshadowed what we now call control theory. He played a key part in the development of the units we use for electrical quantities.By all accounts Maxwell was a modest, generous, and well-mannered man. He wrote whimsical poetry, discussed a multitude of topics (although he had little interest in politics), was an enthusiastic horseman and athlete (he would swim in the sea off Scotland in the winter), and was happily married, with his wife Katherine an active participant in his experiments. All his life, he supported general education in science, founding a working men's college in Cambridge and lecturing at such colleges throughout his career.Maxwell lived only 48 years—he died in 1879 of the same cancer which had killed his mother when he was only eight years old. When he fell ill, he was engaged in a variety of research while presiding at the Cavendish Laboratory. We shall never know what he might have done had he been granted another two decades.Apart from the significant achievements Maxwell made in a wide variety of fields, he changed the way physicists look at, describe, and think about natural phenomena. After using a mental model to explore electromagnetism, he discarded it in favour of a mathematical description of its behaviour. There is no theory behind Maxwell's equations: the equations are the theory. To the extent they produce the correct results when experimental conditions are plugged in, and predict new phenomena which are subsequently confirmed by experiment, they are valuable. If they err, they should be supplanted by something more precise. But they say nothing about what is really going on—they only seek to model what happens when you do experiments. Today, we are so accustomed to working with theories of this kind: quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, and the standard model of particle physics, that we don't think much about it, but it was revolutionary in Maxwell's time. His mathematical approach, like Newton's, eschewed explanation in favour of prediction: “We have no idea how it works, but here's what will happen if you do this experiment.” This is perhaps Maxwell's greatest legacy.This is an excellent scientific biography of Maxwell which also gives the reader a sense of the man. He was such a quintessentially normal person there aren't a lot of amusing anecdotes to relate. He loved life, loved his work, cherished his friends, and discovered the scientific foundations of the technologies which allow you to read this.

The author was right that, among the populace, few would appreciate what the title “The Man who Changed Everything” meant. The author spelled out this succinctly in the first paragraph of the last chapter, which began with the sentence “The influence of James Clerk Maxwell runs all through our daily lives…..” For any adult who has no clue what this sentence implies, he or she has to know that there is something sorely lacking in his/her education.Even for folks familiar with Maxwell’s contribution to electromagnetic theory, the author was of the opinion that few knew of Maxwell’s monumental contributions in other areas of science in general and physics in particular, as well as his family life and career. As someone who made a living on Maxwell’s equations and to a minor extent on the Maxwell/Boltzmann velocity distribution in gas molecules, I heartily agree. I am glad that I read this book which fills the gaps in my knowledge in these areas.The book makes me aware that Maxwell made substantial contributions in many areas of physics and engineering, among them the theory of color and the rules of mixing them, the kinetic theory of gases, negative feedback concept in control systems, theory of the stability of Saturn’s rings for which he won the Adams prize, invention of thought experiment through Maxwell’s demon. He emphasized the importance of experiments. It was not well known that Maxwell was both a theoretician with remarkable mathematical abilities and a tireless experimenter with excellent practical skill, with a lab in one of the floors of his house.Maxwell published his first paper on mathematics when he was 14. He was too young to read it before the Royal Society of London himself so it had to be read by his mentor James Forbes. He was a Chair Professor at the University of Aberdeen at the age of 25.The author made a serious attempt to describe Maxwell’s color triangle and his color matching equation, and to trace Maxwell’s thought process which led to the displacement current and electromagnetic waves. These parts are tough-going.The book told an interesting story about the history of the Cavendish Laboratory. William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, donated funds for the construction of the laboratory and Maxwell was asked to oversee its establishment and served as the first head. The Duke was the relative of Henry Cavendish, who was a recluse chemist and physicist. He did a lot of fascinating experiments on electricity. His manuscripts were unpublished. At the request of William Cavendish, Maxwell undertook to edit Henry Cavendish’s work, and published it by Cambridge University Press in 1879.Cavendish Laboratory opened in 1974. As of 2019, 30 Cavendish researchers have won Nobel Prizes. Notable discoveries to have occurred at the Cavendish Laboratory include the discovery of the electron, neutron, and structure of DNA.It was a mystery that Maxwell was much honored in other countries than in his home country. An episode illustrated this point. In 1960, the Royal Society of London held its tricentenary celebration. The Queen attended. In her speech she praised a number of famous former Fellows-presumably listed for her by the Society. Inexplicably Maxwell was not among them. He has been more widely commemorated elsewhere, even in countries without a strong scientific tradition such as Mexico and Nicaragua, which are among those who have issue special postage stamps in his honor.The book gives a detailed account of Maxwell’s family live. Maxwell’s curiosity about the natural world was evident when he was a child. When he encountered something he did not understand, he asked his parents questions. If he was not satisfied with their answers, he would ask follow up questions. He married Katherine Mary Dewar, who was seven years older than he. They had no children.Maxwell died of abdominal cancer at the age of 48, the same disease that killed his mother. Katherine died seven years later. Among the words his physician Dr. Paget used to describe Maxwell at his death was “…No man ever met death more consciously or more calmly.”His friends remembered him as a man of extraordinary personal charm and generous spirit: inspiring, entertaining and entirely without vanity. The inscription in the plaque in front of the Parton Churchyard in his hometown Glenlair stated “A good man, full of humour and wisdom…”This reviewer would like to add “He liked to compose poems to humor himself as well his colleagues and friends. You will enjoy these poems which are scattered throughout the book”Finally, a wise quote by Maxwell: “It’s no use thinking of the chap you might have been”.

A well written book showing the great genius that was James Clerk Maxwell and his outstanding contributions in several branches of physics. However, in regards of the Maxwell’s key contribution to electromagnetism, the author follows the official misleading narrative. Maxwell's four equations, famously used in every text book on physics and serving as the mathematical underpinning of all electromagnetic/static applications, are NOT the original Maxwell equations. They are, instead, an inferior version thanks to Oliver Heaviside, who made them after cropping out the quaternions which removed the scalar potential component because "It was too mystical”. Quaternions have a vector and a scalar part and have a higher topology than vector and tensor analysis. Heaviside was able to greatly distort Maxwell's 20 equations in 20 variables, replacing them by four equations in two variables. Today we call these 'Maxwell's equations' forgetting that they are in fact 'Heaviside's equations'. The original version of Maxwell's equations was a set of 20 equations, but some are just sets of three in the three coordinates, which in vector notation reduces the total to 8. One is about charge conservation and another is Ohm's Law, but there is also an extra field NOT included in the modern set of 4 field equations, the 'vector potential' (A). Maxwell's 20 original quaternion equations describe certain physical effects that CANNOT be explained by the simplified vector equations. There is good reason to believe that it is in some sense more fundamental than the usual electric (E) and magnetic (B) fields. There are experiments demonstrating the Aharonov-Bohm effect where the E and B fields are arbitrarily small, but a non-zero vector potential has a significant effect on electron diffraction, and also in the theory of quantum electrodynamics the vector potential plays a central roll. So why is it widely ignored in Electricity/Electronics? Maxwell was most certainly not a stepping stone for Einstein as is often suggested, Maxwell’s most important work has been swept under the carpet and a set of equations with a partial connection to Maxwell have been promoted in his name and used in a manner which is far removed from Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. Also, there is the fact that one of the most important of Maxwell’s equations has been wrongly credited to Lorentz and referred to as the Lorentz force law and treated as ‘supplementary’ to Maxwell’s equations. Einstein, being ignorant of Maxwell’s original 20 equations and the fact that they contained the Lorentz force law, hence wrongly believed that the equations contained no convective term, and so he made the erroneous conclusion that Maxwell’s equations mean that the speed of light must be frame independent in contradiction of classical principles of vector addition of velocities. This erroneous conclusion led Einstein to his special theory of relativity in 1905, and it subsequently led to the erroneous belief amongst both relativists and many anti- relativists, that Ein-stein’s special theory of relativity follows naturally from Maxwell’s theory, when in fact Maxwell and Einstein were not even remotely working along the same lines.

I have read a number of biographies on Maxwell, starting from that of his school friend Lewis Campbell, which was written very soon after his death, and hence is reticent over some aspects of his life. However, it is one of the.primary sources for all the subsequent ones. Of these, in my opinion, this one is the best for the reader who can appreciate the importance of his work in many areas, without being able to follow the detailed technical arguments. Peter Higgs a while back summed Maxwell up with admirable conciseness: "there were Archimedes, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein". No need to say more about Maxwell's scientific status. However, there is a human story there as well: Maxwell seems to have been one of the nicest people ever to walk this earth, as well as one of the most brilliant. This book gets a good balance for the non-scientific reader (it almost persuaded me that I understood what a "curl" was). It also gives an excellent picture of the other workers at the time in the various fields in which Maxwell worked, and Maxwell's relationships with them.

I teach physics and was already an admirer of Maxwell but I didn't appreciate the number and diversity of his contributions to the subject. Here was a man who combined supreme intelligence and insight with hard work and perseverance. As the author pointed out his achievements have never received the recognition they deserve partly because his ideas were so far ahead of their time and because the credit often went to the experimentalists who subsequently proved his predictions. An excellent read.

I really enjoyed reading this book which covers the life of James Clerk Maxwell, the man famous for his equations that tied together electricity and magnetism to create formulae for electro-magnetic radiation including light. The book covered his life and his science and made me aware of just how much more he had contributed in addition to these famous equations. As it goes through his life it gives you enough to understand what he did, where he did it, and with who etc.. And it's a nice length too.But a few disappointments. Firstly there was some maths in there, but not enough to really understand (unless I suspect you had already done it at University). So we are introduced for example to curl. The author makes a valiant attempt to describe what this means, but for me ultimately he fails -- there just isn't quite enough to "get it". And even with repeated recourse to Wiki, I'm still not sure I've quite got it. So either more maths and diagrams or less.Secondly there is nothing bad said about him. I could just about live with this until I read the authors comments about his wife. There, despite the fact that everyone seems not to have liked her, the author refrains from that conclusion, preferring to question the reliability of the sources of criticism. So I have to conclude that Dr Mahon is rather biased and blind to any faults Maxwell may have had. In the Authors mind it seems Maxwell can do no wrong.Thirdly most of the notes should have been in the text. All were interesting so no need to relegate them to the endAnd lastly I do wish he referred to Maxwell and not to James. I've just read a biography of Einstein and I can't imagine anyone referring to Albert all the way through. So I found "James this" and "James that" way to informal, and rather irritating -- but then that is a personal preference.

The Man who Changed Everything by Basil Mahon is a wonderful book which outlines not only Maxwell's scientific achievements but his humble inspirational life. As an aspiring physics University student, this is the first book I've read on Maxwell, before finishing it my knowledge of Maxwell was extremely limited.James Clerk Maxwell was born in Scotland, as a child he was laughed at in school for wearing homemade clothes, which gave him the name 'Daftie'. Maxwell was known to have a funny, humble, charitable and loving personality to all those he met.Maxwell wrote his first paper when he was 14 on ovals and curves which was last discussed by Descartes! He would later develop the ideas for statistical analysis (Maxwell-Boltzman Distribution), thought experiments (Maxwell's Demon), thermodynamics, optics (how the eye perceives images), perception of colour (the first colour photograph), the basis for control theory, information theory, and so much more! Maxwell is probably the most underrated scientist ever, his contributions to mankind is unbelievable.Those that have heard of Maxwell know him for 'Maxwell's Equations' where he unified electricity and magnetism into one entity and which is now known to be a fundamental force of the universe. Maxwell was then able to theoretically calculate the speed of light perfectly! I won't even try to explain how much electricity has helped society and mankind, but just so you know it's all thanks to Maxwell.Maxwell's equations consist of 4 equations: 1. Guass' Law of Electric fields, 2. Guass' Law of Magnetic fields, 3. Faraday's Law and 4. The Ampere-Maxwell Law. Now wait a minute! Maxwell seems to have barely done anything, just changed a bit of Ampere's law and taken all the credit for the whole electromagnetic theory. That's what I first thought! Maxwell has done a lot more than that, a conceptual basis for electromagnetism to understand why the laws worked, to link electricity and much more. He developed the idea of flux, fields through his seemingly strange analogy of 'rotating wheels and idle wheels' (remember the electron wasn't discovered until 30 years later or so!). A important point to also mention is that Maxwell was then able to establish light as electromagnetic waves! And calculate its velocity!Maxwell influenced many scientists during his lifetime but also after, Boltzman, Einstein, Feyman, and much more! I don't know how much more I can stress Maxwell's achievements, it is truly sad that he is not given the real credit he deserves, as people nowadays would of heard of Newton and Einstein but Maxwell is definitely up there in their league.I learnt so much from reading Mahon's book, although it is does get rather dry when the author tries to explain scientific concepts and such. It is also quite difficult to undersand certain mathematical functions such as curl, div, without any further maths knowledge. Maxwell's concept of his 'rotating wheels and idle wheels' was rather difficult to take in but overall the book is relatively okay to read, certainly fun and educating! Recommended for scientists but also those who just have a general interest! Much can be learnt about Maxwell's life just from this short book.Don't forget that without Maxwell's equations you wouldn't have the computer to even read this review!