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James Clerk Maxwell did revolutionary work on electricity and magnetism and on the kinetic theory of gases.
Maxwell attended Edinburgh Academy where he had the nickname 'Dafty'. While still at school he had two papers published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Maxwell then went to Peterhouse Cambridge but moved to Trinity where it was easier to obtain a fellowship. Maxwell graduated with a degree in mathematics from Trinity College in 1854.
He held chairs at Marischal College in Aberdeen (1856) and married the daughter of the Principal. However in 1860 Marischal College and King's College combined and Maxwell, as the junior of the department had to seek another post. After failing to gain an appointment to a vacant chair at Edinburgh he was appointed to King's College in London (1860) and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge in 1871.
Maxwell's first major contribution to science was a study of the planet Saturn's rings, and won him the Adams Prize at Cambridge. Maxwell showed that stability could be achieved only if the rings consisted of numerous small solid particles, an explanation now confirmed by the Voyager spacecraft.
Maxwell next considered the kinetic theory of gases. By treating gases statistically in 1866 he formulated, independently of Ludwig Boltzmann, the Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases. This theory showed that temperatures and heat involved only molecular movement.
This theory meant a change from a concept of certainty, heat viewed as flowing from hot to cold, to one of statistics, molecules at high temperature have only a high probability of moving toward those at low temperature. Maxwell's approach did not reject the earlier studies of thermodynamics but used a better theory of the basis to explain the observations and experiments.
Maxwell's most important achievement was his extension and mathematical formulation of Michael Faraday's theories of electricity and magnetic lines of force. His paper On Faraday's lines of force was read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in two parts, 1855 and 1856. Maxwell showed that a few relatively simple mathematical equations could express the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields and their interrelation.
The four partial differential equations, now known as Maxwell's equations, first appeared in fully developed form in Electricity and Magnetism (1873). They are one of the great achievements of 19th-century mathematics.
Maxwell also calculated that the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic field is approximately that of the speed of light (1862). He proposed that the phenomenon of light is therefore an electromagnetic phenomenon. Maxwell said:
We can scarcely avoid the conclusion that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.
Maxwell left King's College, London in the spring of 1865 and returned to his Scottish estate. He made periodic trips to Cambridge and, rather reluctantly, accepted an offer from Cambridge to be the first Cavendish Professor of Physics in 1871. He designed the Cavendish laboratory and helped set it up.
He was described Thomas Hirst as talkative with a Scotch brogue .
References elsewhere in this archive:
Tell me about Maxwell's work on special relativity and on on general relativity
Tell me about his part in the history of mathematics
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