19th Century Pioneer

James Clerk Maxwell

Born: 13 June 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 5 Nov 1879 in Cambridge, England

He attended Edinburgh Academy.  He obtained a fellowship and graduated with a degree in mathematics from Trinity College in 1854; then was awarded a Fellowship by Trinity to continue work.

One of Maxwell's most important achievements 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 relationship and behavior of electric and magnetic fields.
 
In 1862, Maxwell calculated that the propagation speed of an electromagnetic field is approximately that of the speed of light. He proposed that light is therefore an electromagnetic phenomenon.

In 1871 he accepted a position at Cambridge and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. He designed and helped set up Cavendish laboratory.  One of the tasks which occupied much of Maxwell's time between 1874 and 1879 was his work editing Henry Cavendish's papers. Cavendish published only two papers and left twenty packages of manuscript on mathematical and experimental electricity. He repeated many of Cavendish’s experiments, and copied the manuscript with his own hand. Maxwell published a volume titled The Electrical Researches of the Honorable Henry Cavendish in 1879.
 
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.