James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

James Clerk Maxwell

(1831-1879)

Biography and inventions of James Clerk Maxwell

In 1841, a young boy of ten was admitted to

the prestigious Edinburgh Academy School.

The boy, James Clerk Maxwell had been

brought up in a country estate in Scotland and

was dressed like a country boy. This made

him the butt of many a joke among his

schoolmates and he soon got a nickname –

Dafty! He was shy and made no friends but

rather spent his time drawing curious

diagrams and mechanical models. In fact,

Maxwell had been fascinated with toys and

mechanical contraptions since his childhood.

This fascination and curiosity played an

important role in his later career. His

schoolmates and teachers realized that here

was a mathematical prodigy when a paper

written by Maxwell was read before the Royal

Society of Edinburgh in 1846. Maxwell attended the Edinburgh University, and later

shifted to Cambridge in 1850. While still at

physics and mathematics. At Cambridge, he

came into contact with some of the finest

minds of his times. He finished his Tripos in

second position in 1854. He continued to be at

Cambridge and became a Fellow of Trinity

College. At this time, he extended the work of

another British genius, Faraday had

discovered the magnetic properties of electric

currents. It two important papers read to the

Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1855 and

1856, Maxwell showed how both the electric

and magnetic phenomena could be expressed

in a few simple mathematical equations.

These were among the most productive years

of his life. In early 1856, Maxwell's father fell

ill and Maxwell tried to obtain a job in

Scotland to be with him. Unfortunately, his

father died soon thereafter but Maxwell took up the appointment in Aberdeen, Scotland. In

1857, Maxwell wrote a path-breaking essay

for the prestigious Adam's Prize announced

by Cambridge. He wrote on the Motion of

Saturn's Rings and his essay easily won him

the prize. One of the judges wrote that it was

"one of the most remarkable applications of

mathematics to physics." In 1859, Maxwell

married Katherine Mary Dewar, who was the

daughter of the principal of the college where

he taught in Aberdeen. Though he had become

very famous in scientific circles, he still lost

his job and had to hunt for another one in

1860 when the college combined with King's

College. He then applied for a chair at the

University of Edinburgh and several people

including Faraday wrote letters of

recommendation for him. Unfortunately, he

did not get the job because the university felt

that though he was the most deserving candidate, he was so good that he may not be

able to teach poorly qualified students!

Maxwell joined Cambridge University in

1860 and undertook a lot of experimental

work, which led him to formulate his kinetic

theory of gases. In this work, Maxwell

showed that temperature and heat are related

to the motion of molecules in a gas, for

example, was responsible for the pressure of

the gas. His ideas on gases and heat were

further developed by the German scientist

Ludwig Boltzman and are now considered the

accepted theory of gases. It was at this time

that Maxwell further developed his ideas on

electromagnetism waves. He showed that a

disturbance in the electric or magnetic fields

propagate as electromagnetic waves and the

velocity of the waves is that of light. These

waves were experimentally produced by Hertz

in 1877 and led to the development of the radio. In one shot, Maxwell had

revolutionized physics, and as the famous

scientist Feynman says, his discovery of the

laws of electromagnetism was the most

significant event of the 19th century. Maxwell

returned to his estate in rural Scotland in 1865

but made periodic trips to Cambridge. He

reluctantly accepted the first Cavendish

Professorship in physics in 1871. He designed

and helped set up the Cavendish Laboratory,

which has now become one of the finest

laboratories in the world for physics. In 1879,

Maxwell's health began to fail but he

continued to lecture at Cambridge. His health

continued to deteriorate, and in November

1879, he passed away at Cambridge. Einstein

later wrote: (One scientific epoch ended, and

another began with James Maxwell.

Facts at a Glance:

. Maxwell experimented with tinted papers

and established the modern theory of color

vision. He also wrote several papers in

geometry and the properties of elastic solids.

. His main work was in the field of

electromagnetism. He developed a

mathematical theory that unified electricity

and magnetism.

. Maxwell's work was the basis on which

Einstein developed his theory of relativity.

. Maxwell also worked on the behavior of

gases. He proposed that the properties of gases

that we see are fundamentally derived from

the random motion of molecules in the gas.

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Instructor: Samiullah Zewak